E96 JC Alverdy on Gut Microbiome and Solipsism

Cold Steel: Canadian Journal of Surgery Podcast

Dr. John C Alverdy (https://twitter.com/JCAlverdy?s=20) is a minimally invasive surgeon at the University of Chicago. He is an iconoclastic scientist whose research focuses on gut microbiome and its impact on surgical site infections. His lab is continuously NIH funded, with publications in Nature and many other high impact journals. More importantly, however, Dr. Alverdy is willing to challenge commonly accepted ideas, like the very basic tenet that we really know why anastomoses leak. He gave a fantastic talk this year at the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons, and we’d highly encourage you all to listen to that well.

Links:

1. ASCRS distinguished lectureships. https://fascrs.org/my-ascrs/meetings-events/2021-annual-scientific-meeting/distinguished-lectureships

2. The gut microbiota and gastrointestinal surgery. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27729657/

3. Re-examining causes of surgical site infections following elective surgery in the era of asepsis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32006469/

4. Serial Endoscopic Surveillance & Direct Topical Antibiotics to Define the Role of Microbes in Anastomotic Healing (SES-DTA). https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02682485

5. Alverdy lab website: https://wiki.uchicago.edu/display/surgery/Alverdy+Lab+Wiki

Bio (from University of Chicago surgery website):

John C. Alverdy, MD, performs a wide variety of complex minimally invasive and open gastrointestinal surgical procedures with decades of experience in the field. Dr. Alverdy is nationally recognized for introducing several new operations into the field, including minimally invasive pancreatic surgery, bariatric surgery, and surgery for disorders of the foregut including the esophagus and stomach.

Dr. Alverdy has also run a continuously funded NIH-funded laboratory that studies the molecular interactions of bacteria and the intestinal mucosa in order to understand how life-threatening infections arise after trauma and major surgery and during critical illness. He has developed several anti-infective polymer-based compounds that can attenuate the virulence of several multi-drug resistant pathogens that cause life threatening infections in surgical patients and works with the IME to synthesize, refine, and scale the compounds for pre-clinical testing.