Andrew Tomaras is currently a Senior Vice President at Blacksmith Medicines, a small biotech company focused on bringing novel-class, metalloenzyme-targeting antibiotics to patient populations with unmet medical needs. He began his industry career in the Pfizer Antibacterials Research Unit, where his laboratory studied and de-risked resistance liabilities across all portfolio programs. He also explored new high-throughput screening modalities to exploit novel targets and pathways to facilitate next generation drug discovery. With the closure of the small molecule discovery unit, Dr. Tomaras joined the Pfizer Global Biotherapeutics Technologies division and helped to start a new group that evaluated the utility of monoclonal antibodies as antibacterial agents. From Pfizer, Andrew transitioned to the infectious diseases diagnostics field, joining and serving BacterioScan as its Chief Scientific Officer.
Dr. Tomaras holds A.B. and PhD degrees in microbiology from Miami University, with his dissertation research focusing on the genetic and molecular mechanisms of biofilm formation by Acinetobacter baumannii. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, studying the exploitation of virulence factors as new antibiotic targets in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the biothreat pathogens Burkholderia mallei and pseudomallei.