Biography
David Relman, M.D., is associate professor of medicine, and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University. He is also chief, infectious diseases section, at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California.
A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Relman holds an S.B. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his M.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard Medical School in 1982. Following postdoctoral clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Internal Medicine and in Infectious Diseases, Dr. Relman served as a postdoctoral research fellow in microbiology at Stanford University in the laboratory of Stanley Falkow from 1986 until 1992. He joined the Stanford University faculty in 1992 and was appointed associate professor (with tenure) in 2001.
His research is directed towards the characterization of the human indigenous microbial communities of the mouth and gut, with emphasis on understanding variation in diversity, succession, the effects of disturbance, and the role of these communities in oral and intestinal disease. Experimental approaches include molecular phylogenetics, ecological statistics, single cell genomics, and community-wide metagenomics. A second area of research concerns the classification structure of humans and non-human primates with systemic infectious diseases, based on patterns of genome-wide gene transcript abundance in blood and other tissues. The goals of this work are to recognize classes of pathogen and predict clinical outcome at early time points in the disease process, as well as gain further insights into virulence (e.g., of variola and monkeypox viruses). Past achievements include the description of a novel approach for identifying previously-unknown pathogens, the identification of a number of new human microbial pathogens, including the agent of Whipple’s disease, and the most extensive descriptions to date of the human indigenous microbial community.
Dr. Relman received the Squibb Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (2001), the Senior Scholar Award in Global Infectious Diseases from the Ellison Medical Foundation (2002), and is a recipient of an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (2006). He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2003.
Dr. Relman currently serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (2003-2006), and co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Advances in Technology and the Prevention of Their Application to Next Generation Biowarfare (2004-2006). He is a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, the Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Microbial Threats, and advises several U.S. Government departments and agencies on matters related to microbial pathogen detection and future biological threats.
Abstract
Microbial Ecology of the Human Intestinal Tract
The human body is a consortium between human cells and microbial cells. The latter outnumber the former by approximately ten-fold. Each cell type depends upon the other. Although we know that our microbial inhabitants provide a number of critical functions, we know little about the make-up of our microbial communities in health, and how they may contribute to a variety of disease states. The broad, long-term objectives of the proposed work are a more complete understanding and definition of human health based on the patterns of diversity within indigenous microbial community, the identification of microbial community “signatures” that predict the development or course of local disease, and strategies for the maintenance or restoration of health that involve well-informed manipulations of the human microbial communities. The specific aims of this work are to characterize the composition of the human gut microbial communities in health, the changes in these communities during inflammatory bowel disease, and the responses of the distal gut microbial communities to antibiotic exposure.