Paras Jain

Paras Jain, Ph.D.

Area of research

  • Tuberculosis, Persisters, Drug target identification, Bacteriophages, Mycobacteriophages, Reporter phages, Toxin-antitoxin, topoisomerases, SMC

Email

Location

  • Intellectual Ventures Laboratory 14360 South East Gate Way Bellevue, WA 98007

Research Profiles

Research Profiles

Research Profiles

Professional Interests

Diagnosing active tuberculosis (TB) in people and then testing whether their infection is sensitive to drugs can take weeks—a delay that greatly hinders effective treatment, especially in TB/HIV co-infected patients. Being associated with poverty, an ideal TB test should be affordable to the lowest income group in the most undeveloped nation. I am involved with the development of a rapid, sensitive and inexpensive TB detection/drug susceptibility test for use in poor resource settings. We have developed ɸ²GFP10 and TBlue assays to analyze Mycobacterium tuberculosis cells directly from sputum samples using reporter mycobacteriophages. We are at a junction of taking this test from bench to field testing. In addition, these phages are been used to determine response to treatment in TB patients.

Selected Publications

  1. O'Donnell MR, Larsen MH, Brown TS, Jain P, Munsamy V, Wolf A, Uccellini L, Karim F, de Oliveira T, Mathema B, Jacobs WR, Pym A. Early Detection of Emergent Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis by Flow Cytometry-Based Phenotyping and Whole-Genome Sequencing. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2019, 63: e01834-18.
  2. Vilchéze C, Copeland J, Keiser TL, Weisbrod T, Washington J, Jain P, Malek A, Weinrick B, Jacobs WR Jr. Rational Design of Biosafety Level 2-Approved, Multidrug-Resistant Strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis through Nutrient Auxotrophy. MBio. 2018, 9: e00938-18.
  3. Vilchéze C, Hartman T, Weinrick B, Jain P, Weisbrod TR, Leung LW, Freundlich JS, Jacobs WR Jr., Enhanced respiration prevents drug tolerance and drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017, 114: 4495-4500.
  4. Jain P*, Weinrick BC*, Kalivoda EJ, Yang H, Munsamy V, Vilcheze C, Weisbrod T, Larsen MH, O'Donnell MR, Pym A, and Jacobs WR Jr., Dual-reporter mycobacteriophages reveal pre-existing Mycobacterium tuberculosis persistent cells in human sputum. MBio. 2016 7: e01023-16 [*co-first authors].
  5. Mayer O, Jain P, Weisbrod T, Biro D, Ho L, Jacobs-Serae D, Hatfull GF, and Jacobs WR Jr., Fluorescent reporter DS6A mycobacteriophages reveal unique variations in infectability and phage production in mycobacteria J. Bacteriol. 2016, 198: 3220-32.
  6. O'Donnell MR, Pym A, Jain P, Munsamy V, Wolf A, Karim F, Jacobs WR Jr. and Larsen MH, A Novel Reporter Phage To Detect Tuberculosis and Rifampin Resistance in a High-HIV-Burden Population. J Clin Microbiol. 2015, 53: 2188-94.
  7. Panas MW*, Jain P*, Yang H, Mitra S, Biswas D, Wattam AR, Letvin NL, and Jacobs WR Jr., Noncanonical SMC protein in Mycobacterium smegmatis restricts maintenance of Mycobacterium fortuitum plasmids. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014, 111: 13264-71[*co-first authors].
  8. Jain P*, Hsu T*, Arai M, Biermann, K., Thaler DS, Nguyen A, Gonzalez PA, Tufariello JM, Kriakov J, Chen B, Larsen MH and Jacobs WR Jr., Specialized transduction designed for precise high-throughput unmarked deletions in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. MBio. 2014, 5: e01245-14 [*co-first authors].
  9. Miallau L*, Jain P*, Arbing MA, Cascio D, Phan T, Ahn CJ, Chan S, Chernishof I, Maxson M, Chiang J, Jacobs WR Jr. and Eisenberg D, Comparative proteomics identifies the cell associated lethality of Mycobacterium tuberculosis RelBE-like toxin-antitoxin complexes. Structure. 2013, 21: 627-37 [*co-first authors].
  10. Jain P, Hartman TE, Eisenberg N, O'Donnell MR, Kriakov J, Govender K, Makume M, Thaler DS, Hatfull GF, Sturm AW, Larsen MH, Moodley P, Jacobs WR Jr., ɸ2GFP10: A high-intensity fluorophage enables detection and rapid drug susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis directly from sputum samples. J Clin Microbiol. 2012, 50: 1362-69.