Primary Job Title Scientific Founder Primary Organization 
NovaDigm Therapeutics
Location Los Angeles, California, United States Regions Greater Los Angeles Area, West Coast, Western US Gender Male
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Dr. Spellberg is Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He is also the Associate Medical Director for Inpatient Services, and an Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency Training Program at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He received his BA in Molecular Cell
Biology-Immunology in 1994 from UC Berkeley. He then attended medical school at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he received numerous academic honors, including serving as the UCLA AOA Chapter Co-President, and winning the prestigious Stafford Warren award for the topic academic performance in his graduating class. Dr. Spellberg completed his Residency in Internal Medicine and subspecialty fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he received the Department of Medicine Subspecialty Fellow of the Year award.
Dr. Spellberg has extensive patient care and teaching activities, including oversight of inpatient care hospitalwide at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. His research interests are diverse, ranging from basic immunology and vaccinology to pure clinical research and outcomes research. His laboratory research has focused on developing a vaccine that targets the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus and the fungus Candida; the vaccine is undergoing clinical development. Dr. Spellberg is currently working on the immunology, vaccinology, and host defense against highly resistant Gram negative bacilli, including Acinetobacter and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae infections. He also has served as the PI of a multi-centered, randomized, double-blinded placebo controlled study of iron chelation adjunctive therapy for mucormycosis. Dr. Spellberg serves as Medical Director for Clinical Research Solutions, a clinical trials unit which supports conduct of clinical research at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Dr. Spellberg has worked extensively with the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) to attempt to bring attention to the problems of increasing drug resistance and decreasing new antibiotics. His research regarding new drug development was a cornerstone of the IDSA’s white paper, Bad Bugs, No Drugs, and has been cited extensively in medical literature and on Capitol Hill. He is a Fellow in the IDSA and joined the IDSA’s Antimicrobial Availability Task Force (AATF) to continue working on this critical problem. As a member and subsequently co-chair of the AATF, he first-authored numerous IDSA position papers and review articles relating to public policy of antibiotic resistance and antibiotic development. Finally, Dr. Spellberg is the author of Rising Plague, which he wrote to inform and educate the public about the crisis in antibiotic resistant infections and lack of antibiotic development.
