Akeem Santos has been a Senior Research Technologist with Cleveland Clinic’s Microbial Culturing & Engineering Core since December 2019. Initially planning to pursue a career in medicine while attending Baldwin Wallace University, he discovered a passion for microbiology research and earned his bachelor’s degree in biology in 2017.

His Journey toward Biology

He credits his current success to a college mentor who encouraged him to pursue research opportunities. This led him to work closely with a professor and gain important hands-on research experience. “One of the required classes was microbiology, and my professor had a strong focus on research.” A memorable project he was assigned involved identifying an unknown bacterium through a set number of tests. “The fewer tests you perform, the better your score is. My professor didn’t tell me what to test for – I was completely on my own,” Akeem adds.

He realized that he genuinely enjoyed the process of deducing which type of bacteria it was. His mentor said, “If you really like that, why not talk to a professor and ask him if you can do more of that?”

After speaking with the professor, he was encouraged to gain more research experience. Together, they spent the next year working on a research project. “I used the experience from that to help prepare myself for the position I have now,” Akeem says.

Then and Now

Before joining Cleveland Clinic, Akeem worked at a detergent company in Macedonia, Ohio, waiting for the perfect research opportunity to come along. “This position was the exact thing I was looking for,” he says.

Now, Akeem spends his time performing experiments at the request of his boss, Muhammed Dwidar, PhD. “The first thing I’ll do is culture the bacteria, which takes about a day. The next day, I’ll take it and apply it to what he’s asking for,” such as genetic engineering, for example.

The bacteria he works with may be derived from patients, but they’re not from Cleveland Clinic patients at Main Campus. “We have a depository where we order them from,” Akeem says.

Pride in their Published Work

One of Akeem’s most proud accomplishments is having their research published in a paper about two years ago that he and his boss collaborated on. They made Salmonella enterica – the bacteria we hear about on the news – safer and dependent on cancer. “The concept involves injecting bacteria into a patient, where the bacteria are designed to specifically target the tumor,” Akeem says. “We’re trying to determine how to localize the bacteria to the target while minimizing the bacteria’s presence in other organs. At that point, the bacteria will deliver a payload to help destroy the cancerous cells.”

For those interested, the article, entitled “Leveraging dysregulated tumor metabolism for targeting anticancer bacteria,” published in Science Advances, describes the process. “Here, we harness the altered tumor metabolism and specifically elevated kynurenine accumulation to target engineered bacteria to the cancer site.”

Translation: “We aim to translate these findings into a novel therapeutic, ultimately improving clinical outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer.”

The Thrill of Problem-Solving

Akeem states that his favorite part of his job involves the thinking portion of it. “When there’s a problem, I have to troubleshoot it. It’s not an assembly line – ‘Oh, when I do X, Y happens. If that doesn’t work, how do I figure it out?’ I think that’s really where the magic is behind it all,” Akeem says.

Offering their expertise through Cleveland Clinic’s Microbial Culturing and Engineering Core, Akeem and Muhammed partner with research teams across the organization, providing support wherever their specialized skills are needed. One of their primary collaborations is with the Ofer Reizes Lab. “These days, as a lab, we primarily collaborate with the Ofer Reizes Lab that’s focused on ovarian and breast cancer research,” Akeem says.

Looking ahead, Akeem expresses interest in tackling more of these projects on his own. “The track for a Senior Research Technologist with the Cleveland Clinic Research Institute involves gradually owning more of the research to the point where I’m designing the studies, performing the studies and collaborating with the Principal Investigators (PIs) rather than the PIs telling me what to do. I’d become more of a collaborative partner,” Akeem shares.

“My goal is to take on more ownership of projects and really make them my own, so I can help move them forward. Looking ahead, I hope to see more therapeutics emerge from our work and become part of everyday care. I want these discoveries to help people and not just stay as something interesting in the research world. Instead of being seen as a cool ‘factoid,’ I want it to be a viable therapeutic option to help people.”