Sanjay Vashee, PhD

Sanjay Vashee is a professor in the Synthetic Biology Group and the Rockville, MD Campus Director at the J. Craig Venter Institute. After joining JCVI in 2003, Dr. Vashee helped the Synthetic Biology Group develop synthetic genomics methods and technologies that led to the creation of a synthetic organism based on Mycoplasma mycoides subspecies capri. His research interests leverage these synthetic genomics technologies to better study and develop therapeutics for human and animal diseases.

Currently, Dr. Vashee is the Principal Investigator on a project funded by the NSF under the BREAD program to develop a more effective vaccine for contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP), an economically very important cattle disease that affects much of Africa, restricting trade and limiting the availability of protein sources for nutrition. He and his colleagues at INRA, France and UBERN, Switzerland are adapting the JCVI synthetic genomics technology to allow genetic manipulation of the CBPP pathogen, M. mycoides subspecies mycoides, expanding the mycoplasma genetic toolbox and using the latest genome sequencing platforms to identify virulence factors.

Together, these advances should help develop a more effective and safe vaccine based upon a rationally designed attenuated strain. Dr. Vashee also helps lead ongoing NIH funded projects that leverage synthetic genomics approaches to engineer large DNA viruses, including human herpesviruses on a genome-wide and combinatorial scale. Collaborators in these efforts include researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Herpes simplex virus 1 and Epstein Barr virus) as well as researchers at Tomegavax and Synthetic Genomics Vaccines, Inc. to develop a synthetic human cytomegalovirus vaccine. More recently, Dr. Vashee leads IDRC-funded efforts to develop genetic tools to manipulate African swine fever virus and DARPA-funded efforts to develop a Forensic Microbial System.

Prior to joining JCVI, Dr. Vashee was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University-School of Medicine where he was the first to characterize the in vitro DNA-binding properties of the human origin recognition complex, the initiator protein of eukaryotic DNA replication. Dr. Vashee holds a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a master's degree in Chemistry from Western Illinois University and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin.