Elizabeth Hughes

I am passionate about host-microbe-microbe interactions. I love discovering the mechanisms by which gut microbes modulate host health and how the gut ecosystem is structured. I completed my PhD in Sebastian Winter’s lab at UT Southwestern Medical Center. During my PhD, I identified bacterial metabolic pathways that enable populations of Enterobacteriaceae, such as E. coli, to bloom during intestinal inflammation. As a postdoc in the Valdivia lab, I am studying Akkermansia muciniphila, a mucolytic gut commensal that seems to play a significant role in host health. Akkermansia has been shown to improve response to cancer immunotherapy, but the mechanisms driving this immunomodulation are incompletely understood. I am working to identify the mechanisms mediating Akkermansia‘s ability to promote anti-tumor responses during immune checkpoint blockade therapy. I am also studying strategies to control levels of Akkermansia colonization in the gut by leveraging intraspecies competition and phages.