Welcome to the Fossati Lab! We are part of the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC) at Karolinska Institutet and affiliated with SciLifeLab through the Data-Driven Life Science (DDLS) program.
The lab in November 2025
Bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria, have been locked in an evolutionary arms race with their hosts for billions of years. Within minutes of infection, a phage takes over its host: it rewires protein complexes, disables bacterial defenses and redirects the cell’s machinery to its own replication. We study this takeover at the molecular scale, combining interaction proteomics, functional genomics and machine learning to map which viral–host interfaces are essential for infection.
Much of our work focuses on mycobacteria, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Our goal is to turn what we learn from phages into new ways to fight antibiotic-resistant infections, from smarter phage–antibiotic combinations to phages and phage-derived molecules that we can predict and engineer. Read more about our research.
Our research is supported by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (DDLS), the Swedish Research Council, FEBS and NordForsk.