Professor Andres Floto

Professor ANDRES FLOTO FMedSci

University Professor of Respiratory Biology, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge (2014 – 2037; funded by University 100%)

Co-Director, Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine (2020-)

Co-Director, Cambridge Infectious Diseases Interdisciplinary Research Centre (2020-)

Director, UK Cystic Fibrosis Innovation Hub, University of Cambridge (2017-)

Research Director, Cambridge Centre for Lung Infection, Papworth Hospital (2009-)

Honorary Respiratory Consultant, Cambridge University & Papworth Hospitals (2008-)

PA Name: Amy Blowers

PA Email: amb312@cam.ac.uk

Twitter: @flotogroup, @AndresFloto

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andres-floto-89876538/

Mastodon/other social media: www.flotolab.com

arf27@cam.ac.uk

Biography

Andres received his BA, MA, PhD, and MB BChir degrees from the University of Cambridge. His PhD (funded by the MRC as part of the Cambridge MB PhD programme) was focused on electrophysiological and biophysical analysis of macrophage signalling. He completed his specialty medical training in Respiratory Medicine in London and Cambridge and an MRC/AMS Tenure-Track Clinician Scientist Fellowship award based at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR), focused on discovering novel pathways involved in innate immune signalling. From 2008-2016, he was a Principal Investigator at CIMR, and then a Group Leader in the Molecular Immunity Unit (based at the MRC-Laboratory of Molecular Biology), before moving to HLRI and joining laboratories with Sir Tom Blundell in February 2023. He is currently funded by the Wellcome Trust (Discovery Award), MRC, the UK Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Trust, the US CF Foundation, LifeArc, NIHR, the Americal Leprosy Mission, and the Gates Foundation.

He has received a number of awards including from the European Respiratory Society (Gold Medal 2022, Inaugural award for Nontuberculous mycobacterial research 2014, Vignola Award for Innovation in Pulmonology 2007), the Royal College of Physicians Weber-Parkes Medal 2017, the Vertex Innovation award 2016, the Rosetrees Foundation Interdisciplinary Prize 2015, and the BUPA Foundation Researcher of the Year 2010. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2022.

Research Approach:

His basic research is focused on understanding how bacteria interact with the innate immune system and evolve through transmission, how forward and reverse genetics can be combined with fragment-based drug discovery to develop novel antibiotics and host-directed therapies, and how machine learning methods, including geometric deep learning, can be used to gain systems-level understanding of bacterial pathobiology.

His clinical research is centred around treating Nontuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM), tackling chronic inflammation in CF and non-CF bronchiectasis, using interpretable machine learning to understand and predict pulmonary exacerbations, and applying deep learning methods to provide individualised clinical forecasting for patients with CF.

Current projects (see www. Flotolab.com for details):

1) Host Innate Immunity against bacteria, focussing on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, M abscessus, and Staphylococcus aureus.

2) Bacterial evolution and mutational spectral analysis (c/w Julian Parkhill, Vet School; Josie Bryant, Wellcome Sanger Institute)

3) Antibiotic discovery for M. tuberculosis, M. abscessus, and M. leprae (c/w Sir Tom Blundell, HLRI; David Spring, Chemistry; Chris Schofield, Ineos Oxford Institute; Charles Haworth, Royal Papworth Hospital (RPH))

4) Chemical permeability, retention, and metabolism in bacteria (c/w David Spring, Chemistry; José Miguel Hernández Lobato, Engineering)

5) Bacterial physiology (c/w Pietro Cicuta & Ulrich Keyser, Physics)

6) Functional genomics of Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and non-CF Bronchiectasis (NCFB) (c/w Open Targets, Pietro Cicuta, Physics; Clare Bryant, HLRI; GSK)

7) Machine learning (ML)-based systems genomic analysis of bacteria (c/w Oli Stegle EBI/DKFZ)

8) ML-based prediction of acute exacerbations in CF and NCFB (c/w John Winn, Microsoft Research, Charles Haworth, RPH)

9) ML-based causal inference, counter-factual estimations, individual treatment effects, and feature selection for healthcare, biomedicine, and genomics (c/w Mihaela van der Schaar, Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine & DAMTP)

Publication

Weimann A, Dinan AM, Ruis C, Bernut A, Pont S, Brown K, Ryan J, Santos L, Ellison L, Ukor E, Pandurangan AP, Krokowski S, Blundell TL, Welch M, Blane B, Judge K, Bousfield R, Brown N, Bryant JM, Kukavica-Ibrulj I, Rampioni G, Leoni L, Harrison PT, Peacock SJ, Thomson NR, Gauthier J, Fothergill JL, Levesque RC, Parkhill J, Floto RA. Evolution and host-specific adaptation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Science. 2024 Jul 5;385(6704):eadi0908. doi: 10.1126/science.adi0908. Epub 2024 Jul 5. PMID: 38963857.
Bryant JM, Brown KP, Burbaud S, Everall I, Belardinelli JM, Rodriguez-Rincon D, Grogono DM, Peterson CM, Verma D, Evans IE, Ruis C, Weimann A, Arora D, Malhotra S, Bannerman B, Passemar C, Templeton K, MacGregor G, Jiwa K, Fisher AJ, Blundell TL, Ordway DJ, Jackson M, Parkhill J, Floto RA. Stepwise pathogenic evolution of Mycobacterium abscessus. Science. 2021 Apr 30;372(6541): eabb8699. doi: 10.1126/science.abb8699. PMID: 33926925.
Bryant JM, Grogono DM, Rodriguez-Rincon D, Everall I, Brown KP, Moreno P, Verma D, Hill E, Drijkoningen J, Gilligan P, Esther CR, Noone PG, Giddings O, Bell SC, Thomson R, Wainwright CE, Coulter C, Pandey S, Wood ME, Stockwell RE, Ramsay KA, Sherrard LJ, Kidd TJ, Jabbour N, Johnson GR, Knibbs LD, Morawska L, Sly PD, Jones A, Bilton D, Laurenson I, Ruddy M, Bourke S, Bowler IC, Chapman SJ, Clayton A, Cullen M, Daniels T, Dempsey O, Denton M, Desai M, Drew RJ, Edenborough F, Evans J, Folb J, Humphrey H, Isalska B, Jensen-Fangel S, Jönsson B, Jones AM, Katzenstein TL, Lillebaek T, MacGregor G, Mayell S, Millar M, Modha D, Nash EF, O'Brien C, O'Brien D, Ohri C, Pao CS, Peckham D, Perrin F, Perry A, Pressler T, Prtak L, Qvist T, Robb A, Rodgers H, Schaffer K, Shafi N, van Ingen J, Walshaw M, Watson D, West N, Whitehouse J, Haworth CS, Harris SR, Ordway D, Parkhill J, Floto RA. Emergence and spread of a human-transmissible multidrug-resistant nontuberculous mycobacterium. Science. 2016 Nov 11;354(6313):751-757. PMID: 27846606
Hepburn L, Prajsnar TK, Klapholz C, Moreno P, Loynes CA, Ogryzko NV, Brown K, Schiebler M, Hegyi K, Antrobus R, Hammond KL, Connolly J, Ochoa B, Bryant C, Otto M, Surewaard B, Seneviratne SL, Grogono DM, Cachat J, Ny T, Kaser A, Török ME, Peacock SJ, Holden M, Blundell T, Wang L, Ligoxygakis P, Minichiello L, Woods CG, Foster SJ, Renshaw SA, Floto RA. Innate immunity. A Spaetzle-like role for nerve growth factor β in vertebrate immunity to Staphylococcus aureus. Science. 2014 Oct 31;346(6209):641-646. PMID: 25359976
Floto RA, MacAry PA, Boname JM, Mien TS, Kampmann B, Hair JR, Huey OS, Houben EN, Pieters J, Day C, Oehlmann W, Singh M, Smith KG, Lehner PJ. Dendritic cell stimulation by mycobacterial Hsp70 is mediated through CCR5. Science. 2006 Oct 20;314(5798):454-8. PMID: 17053144.

Affiliations

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge