Karim Dabbagh, “Mining the human microbiome for therapeutic molecules to treat chronic diseases.”

Karim Dabbagh leads the R&D organization at Second Genome. Prior to that, he led the immunoregulation department at Pfizer, an R&D group focused on innovative approaches to elicit homeostatic immune responses, including microbiome research, for the treatment of immune related disorders. At Pfizer, he also led external R&D innovation for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Before joining Pfizer, Karim was the founder of Modus BioMedicine, a start-up biotechnology company focused on treatments for transplantation and autoimmune disease.  Leading to that, Karim spent nine years at Roche Pharmaceuticals in Inflammation Discovery Research. Dr. Dabbagh received his PhD in biochemistry from University College, London and his BSc in biotechnology from the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco and at Stanford University where he worked on elucidating the role played by the microbiome in the hygiene hypothesis.