Dr. Steven Mileto (He/Him) is a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Group Leader within Professor Dena Lyras' Laboratory within the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) in the Department of Microbiology, where he manages the Host-Pathogen interactions arm of research.  His research has focused on host responses to Clostridioides difficile, completing his PhD at Monash University in 2018, with the aim of understanding how the toxins this bacterium produces target the host to induce inflammation, systemic disease and colonic epithelial and stem cell damage.

Broadly his work now investigates examining the impact of C. difficile and other enteric infections on the gut epithelium, including:  

• the consequences of stem cell damage on disease outcomes.
• the impact of toxin damage to the underlying layers of the gut, including the muscle and enteric nervous system and the effects this may have on systemic disease during infection at sites outside of the gut.

More recently his work has focussed on how we can use these findings to investigate therapeutics to prevent systemic disease, as well as expediting pathways to facilitate repair following C. difficile mediated alteration of colonic stem cell regenerative capacity.