Thomas Dougherty is a Senior Scientist in the laboratory in Professor Steve Lory in the Department of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School. Here, he researches compounds that inhibit the lipoprotein pathway in the periplasm, to pharmacologically compromise the outer membrane integrity of Gram-negative bacteria.

Thomas spent 8 years at the Rockefeller University in Alexander Tomasz’s laboratory, 3 as a postdoctoral fellow and 5 as an assistant professor. He worked on studies funded by the United States, National Institute of Health (NIH) on the role of Neisseria gonorrhoeae penicillin-binding proteins in β-lactam antibiotic mechanism of action and resistance.

Thomas has over 26 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry in the antibiotic R&D groups at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca. His lab was engaged in work that supported drug discovery, including microbial genetics & physiology, high throughput screening, and antibiotic mechanisms of action and mechanisms of resistance. In his industrial roles, Thomas worked on the drugs; cefepime, cefprozil, garenoxicin, and a number of early-stage discovery programs for novel antibiotics, and while at Pfizer, wrote the pre-clinical pharmacology section of the IND for a novel ketolide that entered Phase 1.

At AstraZeneca, in addition to his laboratory leader role, he was part of the Antibiotic Leadership Team and also worked within a team developing a novel gyrase inhibitor. Thomas has served on the Editorial Board of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy for the past 15 years and was a contributor to the 2015 Pew Trust Report on “A Roadmap for Antibiotic Discovery”. He is currently on the Scientific Advisory Board of X-Biotix and is also a reviewer for applications to CARB-X.

Thomas received his doctorate degree in microbiology from Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA.