Prof. Simon Cutting is a bacterial geneticist with over 25 years of experience with Bacillus since graduating from Oxford University with a D. Phil in 1986. His D.Phil was on understanding the genetic control of spore formation in Bacillus subtilis. After spending 7 years in the renowned laboratory of Professor Richard Losick at Harvard University Biological Laboratories USA, he spent 3 years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia. He returned to the UK in 1996 and since then has worked on developing bacterial spores as novel oral vaccines at the Royal Holloway, the University of London. The Cutting lab has developed a number of prototype oral vaccines and is now entering the first in-man phase 1IIa clinical trial of a prototype oral vaccine to Clostridium difficile www.cdvax.org. Professor Cutting is from Royal Holloway, the University of London, UK, and is Chairperson of the TC Diff Foundations Research Development Committee.