Brad Spellberg, MD FIDSA FACP

Dr. Spellberg is Chief Medical Officer at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California (LAC+USC) Medical Center.  He is also Medical Director of Biosciences for Los Angeles County.  He received his BA in Molecular Cell Biology-Immunology from UC Berkeley.  He then attended medical school 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.

Dr. Spellberg has extensive administrative, patient care, and teaching activities.  He has worked for the last 3 years to transform the quality and efficiency of care delivered at LAC+USC Medical Center, the largest public hospital in the US west of the Mississippi.  In this role he has 18 non-clinical direct reports, and another 18 Chiefs of Clinical Services reporting to him.  He has altered many aspects of hospital operations, from HR, to patient flow, to personnel, to UR, Social Services, medical documentation and billing, clinical care, etc.

Dr. Spellberg may be the only Chief Medical Officer in the US who not only continues to be actively clinically, staffing both Internal Medicine ward teams and Infectious Diseases consulting service, but also maintains an active NIH-funded basic science laboratory.  His NIH-funded research interests are diverse, ranging from basic immunology and vaccinology, to pure clinical and outcomes research, to process improvement work related to delivery of care, focusing on safety net hospitals.  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.  Dr. Spellberg has also co-founded 3 biotechnology start up companies, which have resulted in 3 molecules that are in active clinical development (phase I-III clinical trials).

Finally, at the national level, Dr. Spellberg has worked extensively 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.  As a member and then co-chair of the IDSA’s Antimicrobial Availability Task Force (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.