Sabine Ehrt

About

Sabine Ehrt, Ph.D., is the Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine and a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology. Her research focuses on the pathogenesis of tuberculosis, specifically investigating how Mycobacterium tuberculosis establishes and maintains chronic infections, resists host defenses, and develops drug resistance. Her work aims to aid the development of new chemotherapies and vaccines by analyzing the molecular mechanisms that enable the bacteria to persist and evade immune responses. She applies molecular genetics to identify vulnerabilities in the bacteria that could be targeted to improve treatment outcomes, especially in cases of latent infection and multi-drug resistant strains. Additionally, her research explores host immune factors involved in controlling M. tuberculosis and seeks strategies to generate more effective TB vaccines.

Research topics

• Biology
• Biochemistry
• Evolutionary biology
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• Genome-wide gene expression tuning reveals diverse vulnerabilities of M. tuberculosis

  Cell · 2021 · 327 citations

  Antibacterial agents target the products of essential genes but rarely achieve complete target inhibition. Thus, the all-or-none definition of essentiality afforded by traditional genetic approaches fails to discern the most attractive bacterial targets: those whose incomplete inhibition results in major fitness costs. In contrast, gene "vulnerability" is a continuous, quantifiable trait that relates the magnitude of gene inhibition to the effect on bacterial fitness. We developed a CRISPR inter…

  DOI

• Cyclic AMP is a critical mediator of intrinsic drug resistance and fatty acid metabolism in M. tuberculosis

  eLife · 2023 · 24 citations

  and cAMP as central mediators of intrinsic multidrug resistance and fatty acid metabolism in Mtb and highlights the potential utility of small molecule modulators of cAMP signaling.

  PublisherDOI

• Engineered Mycobacterium tuberculosis triple-kill-switch strain provides controlled tuberculosis infection in animal models

  Nature Microbiology · 2025-01-10 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Human challenge experiments could accelerate tuberculosis vaccine development. This requires a safe Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) strain that can both replicate in the host and be reliably cleared. Here we genetically engineered Mtb strains encoding up to three kill switches: two mycobacteriophage lysin operons negatively regulated by tetracycline and a degron domain–NadE fusion, which induces ClpC1-dependent degradation of the essential enzyme NadE, negatively regulated by trimethop…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Differentiating the roles of Mycobacterium tuberculosis substrate binding proteins, FecB and FecB2, in iron uptake

  PLoS Pathogens · 2023-09-25 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of tuberculosis, poses a great threat to human health. With the emergence of drug resistant Mtb strains, new therapeutics are desperately needed. As iron is critical to the growth and survival of Mtb, mechanisms through which Mtb acquires host iron represent attractive therapeutic targets. Mtb scavenges host iron via Mtb siderophore-dependent and heme iron uptake pathways. While multiple studies describe the import of heme and ferric-sideroph…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A BCG kill switch strain protects against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in mice and non-human primates with improved safety and immunogenicity

  Nature Microbiology · 2025-01-10 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01AI092573

  NIH · $3.0M · 2016

• Conditional Expression of Mycobacterial Genes

  NIH · $7.2M · 2006–2024

• Biomarkers of PZA activity and it's target populations

  NIH · $84.8M · 2014–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Dirk Schnappinger

  Cornell University

  116 shared

• Kyu Y. Rhee

  Weill Cornell Medicine

  44 shared

• Carl Nathan

  Cornell University

  34 shared

• Carolina Trujillo

  Hospital Nacional Cayetano Heredia

  31 shared

• Thomas R. Ioerger

  22 shared

• Véronique Dartois

  Hackensack Meridian Health

  19 shared

• Anisha Zaveri

  Cornell University

  17 shared

• Hongwei Su

  Shunyi Hospital of Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital

  17 shared

Labs

• Ehrt Lab & Schnappinger LabPI

Education

• PhD, Microbiology

  Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

  1994

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• John P. Mooreh-153
• Sean Bradyh-72
• Selina Chen-Kiangh-63