Ami Bhatt on the Microbiome, Superbugs, and Cancer Therapy

Stanford hematologist and microbiome researcher Ami Bhatt, MD, PhD, joins The Future of Medicine to explore the microbes living in and on us—and how understanding their evolution could help scientists tackle hospital infections and develop new approaches to cancer therapy.

In this episode, Dr. Bhatt explains why the microbiome is far more dynamic than a collection of bacteria living in the gut. Microbes interact with our immune system and metabolism, but they also evolve rapidly in response to their environment. For patients undergoing treatments such as bone marrow transplantation, those changes can have serious consequences. Bhatt discusses research in which approximately 40% of bloodstream infections in a Stanford bone marrow transplant population could be traced back to microbes already living in the patients’ guts.

The conversation also explores why certain bacteria become particularly dangerous in hospitals. Bhatt describes “jumping genes” — pieces of DNA that can move within a genome — and her lab’s work investigating how this process may help Enterococcus faecium rapidly adapt and emerge as a hospital superbug.

Bhatt also reflects on the experiences that shaped her career, her commitment to patient-centered research, mentorship, and her work expanding access to cancer education through Global Oncology.

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