Research Interests and Accomplishments

Sanjay Vashee joined the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD in 2003 as an Associate Professor in the Synthetic Biology Group headed by Hamilton Smith. He helped the Synthetic Biology Group develop methods and synthetic genomics technologies that led to the creation of a synthetic organism based on Mycoplasma mycoides subspecies capri. His research interests are using the synthetic genomics technologies to better understand human and animal diseases as well as develop vaccines for them.

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 ILRI, Kenya 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 is also involved with researchers at Tomegavax and Synthetic Genomics Vaccines, Inc. on an NIH funded STTR project to develop a synthetic human cytomegalovirus vaccine.

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 Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin.

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