Peter Speck
Associate Professor
Biological Sciences
Flinders University
Australia
Biography
After completion of a PhD in latency of herpes simplex virus, at the University of Adelaide, I undertook post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Cambridge and at Northwestern University in Chicago. In 2001 I returned to Australia to continue herpesvirus-related research at the Inst. of Medical and Veterinary Science, Adelaide. In July 2007 I accepted an offer to move to Flinders University.
Research Interest
Bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. A strong potential alternative is bacteriophages -"phages" -viruses that infect bacteria. In collaboration with US/Australian company AmpliPhi Biosciences, I am pursuing the use of phages as a treatment for bacterial infections in a number of important medical settings: -chronic rhinosinusitis: a human trial of this technology commenced in January 2016, in collaboration with ENT surgeon/scientist Prof. PJ Wormald -diabetic foot ulcer infections -nasal Staphylococcus aureus decolonization. I collaborate with the US Army Medical Research Materiel Command to introduce phages into their Combat Wound Infection Control Program.
Publications
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Drilling, A., Coombs, G., Tan, H.L., Pearson, J., Boase, S., Psaltis, A., et al. (2014). Cousins, siblings, or copies: the genomics of recurrent Staphylococcus aureus infections in chronic rhinosinusitis. International Forum of Allergy and Rhinology,
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Dann, L., Mitchell, J.G., Speck, P., Newton, K., Jeffries, T. and Paterson, J. (2014). Virio- and Bacterioplankton Microscale Distributions at the Sediment-Water Interface. PLoS One, 9(7) pp. e102805.
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Green, T.J., Speck, P.G., geng, L., Raftos, D., Beard, M.R. and Helbig, K. (2015). Oyster viperin retains direct antiviral activity and its transcription occurs via a signalling pathway involving a heat-stable haemolymph protein. Journal of General Virology, 96(12) pp. 3587-3597.
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Speck, P.G. and Smithyman, T. (2016). Safety and efficacy of phage therapy via the intravenous route. FEMS Microbiology Letters, 363(3)
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Carlson-Jones, J.A.P., Paterson, J.S., Newton, K., Smith, R.J., Dann, L.M., Speck, P.G., et al. (2016). Enumerating Virus-Like Particles and Bacterial Populations in the Sinuses of Chronic Rhinosinusitis Patients Using Flow Cytometry. PLoS One, 11(5) pp. Art: e0155003.
