Karen Maxwell

Maxwell’s research group studies phages – tiny viruses that infect and kill bacteria. Her work is contributing to major advances in genome editing and has the potential to transform how we treat bacterial infections through the development of therapeutics that can be used to kill antibiotic resistant bacteria. Maxwell has contributed to ground-breaking discoveries in the field of CRISPR-Cas biology, identifying the first inhibitors of these systems, known as anti-CRISPR

proteins, in collaboration with Alan Davidson’s group in 2013. Her team then went on to discover the first inhibitors of CRISPR-Cas9 systems, which are being used to develop more precise CRISPR-Cas-based tools for a wide range of applications in biotechnology and healthcare. Maxwell was the first to discover that bacteria in the soil produce small chemical compounds that protect them from phage infection. This discovery provided a new paradigm in anti-phage defence and has opened the door to screening large natural product libraries that could be used to treat bacterial and viral infections. Recently, Maxwell and her team received funding to develop therapeutic phages for the treatment of antibiotic resistant bacteria and are currently preparing phages to treat their first human patient here in Toronto. Maxwell has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers, which have appeared in top scientific journals including Nature, Cell, Molecular Cell, and Nature Communications. The innovative nature and impact of her work has been recognized through several prestigious Canadian awards, including the John C. Polanyi Prize (2020), an Arthur B. McDonald Fellowship (2023-2024) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, as well as a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Bacteriophage Biology and Therapeutics (2023-2030).