Joseph P. Zackular, PhD

Dr. Zackular is an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan where he studied the role of the gut microbiota in colorectal cancer in the laboratory of Dr. Patrick Schloss. He joined the laboratory of Dr. Eric Skaar at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for his postdoctoral fellowship where he studied the role of dietary metals and nutritional immunity in C. difficile infection.

The Zackular laboratory is focused on understanding how interactions between the host, gut microbiota, and pathogens impact human health and disease. The labs efforts primarily center on the nosocomial pathogen, Clostridioides difficile, which is an urgent global public health threat. The Zackular lab is interested in understanding how the gut microbiota shapes C. difficile fitness and virulence, and the team is studying how this complex microbial community alters host responses to infection. Recent work from the Zackular lab has focused on elucidating cooperative interactions between C. difficile and other pathogens, such as the enterococci. Leveraging knowledge learned from studying polymicrobial interactions and microbial ecology during infection, the Zackular lab is also developing novel vaccine strategies for the prevention of C. difficile infection and using microbiome-based therapies for the treatment of disease.

Dr. Zackular is co-director of the Center for Microbial Medicine at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which focuses on 1) bringing microbiome-based medicine to pediatric patients and 2) using precision pathogen surveillance for infection prevention and control and to provide children with improved and personalized treatments for infections.