Brian A. Klein PhD

Dr. Klein is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at BrickBuilt Therapeutics Inc. He was a Staff Scientist and Microbiology Platform Lead at Vedanta Biosciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Vedanta, Brian leads the isolation and characterization of microbial strains from healthy donors which become part of our industry-leading Culture Collection, as well as downstream high-throughput screening of the Culture Collection.

Brian obtained a B.S. in Biology from Bates College (USA), a Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology from Tufts University School of Medicine (USA), and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at The Forsyth Institute/Harvard School of Dental Medicine (USA). During his Ph.D. (funded by an NIDCR F31 NRSA grant), Brian focused on mutagenesis and screening of mutant libraries of Porphyromonas gingivalis, a causative agent of periodontal disease in humans. This work culminated in defining the putative essential genes of the species, identifying novel species-specific mobile elements, and elucidating the genetic regions underpinning colony pigmentation in the species. During his postdoctoral fellowship (funded by an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation postdoctoral grant), Brian initiated a study of the nasal and salivary microbiomes of athletes, as well as the microbiome of indoor athletic facilities. This work allowed Brian to develop a study involving human subject sampling from scratch and physically be involved in every step of the process; from grant application to sampling execution, sample processing, and data analysis.