Mario Feldman

Prof. Mario Feldman earned his B.S. in Biotechnology from the National University of Rosario, Argentina, and pursued graduate studies at the Leloir Institute Foundation, affiliated with the University of Buenos Aires. He completed postdoctoral training in Belgium with Guy Cornelis, focusing on Type III Secretion Systems (T3SS), and in Switzerland with Markus Aebi, studying protein glycosylation in bacteria. He subsequently joined the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. In 2015, he became a faculty member at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he is now a full professor.

Dr. Feldman’s research encompasses various aspects of microbiology, with a primary focus on bacterial pathogenesis. Currently, his lab investigates the pathogenesis of Acinetobacter baumannii and the biogenesis of extracellular vesicles in human gut bacteria. He has authored more than 120 publications in leading scientific journals, and in recognition of his contributions to the field, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2021.

A pioneer in the field of bacterial glycoengineering, Dr. Feldman demonstrated the utility of bacterial glycosylation systems in the development of bioconjugate vaccines targeting bacterial pathogens. Bioconjugation relies on bacterial cells that simultaneously produce a polysaccharide antigen along with an engineered carrier protein and a conjugating enzyme to precisely link them together. This is a much simpler process than conventional chemical conjugation methods and has the potential to produce higher quality and more affordable vaccines. In 2016, he co-founded Omniose, a biotechnology company that now has approximately 20 employees and has secured ~$12 million in NIH funding. Omniose is currently collaborating with AstraZeneca to develop vaccines against bacterial infections.