Dr Magda Barbu
Dr. Magda Barbu, Senior Director of Synthetic Biology, leads engineering efforts for C3J’s pipeline of phage therapeutics programs. Dr. Barbu is an established scientist with over 15 years of experience working with lytic and lysogenic phage in both industry and academia. Magda combines her deep expertise in molecular biology, phage biology, bacterial pathogenesis and antimicrobial drug development, to set strategy and deliver key preclinical data essential for advancing the synthetic phage programs from bench to clinic.
Dr. Barbu earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology/Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Magda completed her postdoctoral training at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, which included identifying druggable targets for cancer and other diseases using in vivo phage display. She then worked at Synthetic Genomics, Inc. heading up development of the phage engineering platform and related assets, that were subsequently acquired by C3J Therapeutics. Magda has authored 18 peer-reviewed publications, presented worldwide as an invited speaker and received private and priority government grants for her research in antimicrobial therapeutics and synthetic biology. She has several patents pending.