Zack Abbott, PhD profile page

Dr. Zack Abbott is the CEO and co-founder of ZBiotics. Zack has a PhD in microbiology & immunology from the University of Michigan and holds a bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley, where he double-majored in immunology and classical art & archaeology. During his PhD, the focus of Zack's thesis was on bacterial gene regulation, and he became an expert at understanding how bacteria turn on and off different functions in response to their environment. After his PhD, Zack then had the idea to apply his expertise to the world of safe, edible probiotic bacteria. He wanted to engineer these probiotic bacteria - which to date had only been leveraged for their generalized and inconsistent benefits to do a very specific and useful function directly inside the human body. Combining the tools of genetic engineering with the safe microbes already around us, his goal was to create something new: a microbe "trained" to do something that provided a unique, specific and tangible benefit for people. Zack dove into the research project that would eventually become ZBiotics. He holed up in his lab in Berkeley, California - often sleeping next to his lab bench - and after 12 months emerged with the prototype of the world's 1st genetically engineered probiotic.