Christopher Stewart

Dr. Christopher Stewart has researched the early life microbiome in health and disease for the past decade, specializing on infants born premature (<32 weeks gestation). In that time, he has published over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has regularly presented his work at national and international conferences. Following his PhD and a Fellowship in the UK, he moved to Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX) as a Post-Doctoral Associate, performing both computational and wet-lab experimentation. He then moved to Newcastle University (England, UK) in January 2018 as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellow and is currently building his lab focused on microbial-host interaction in the gut. Within preterm infants, his research group is focused on necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) and late onset sepsis (LOS). By applying state-of-the-art sequencing to clinical samples collected at the Royal Victoria Infirmary (Newcastle upon Tyne), his research has shown that specific microbes are associated with protection from both NEC and LOS. Using a recently developed model that combines human preterm intestinal cells alongside viable microbes, his group is now researching host-microbial interaction to better understand how the microbiome contributes to health and disease in preterm infants.