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Infectious Diseases (ID) IRG

Lead PI: Professor Jianzhu Chen
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The SMART Infectious Disease IRG (ID-IRG) seeks fundamental understanding of host-pathogen interactions as well as direct impact on human heath through translational research. The ID-IRG focuses on infectious diseases that have major impact on human health, including influenza, RSV, dengue fever, malaria and tuberculosis. The strategy of the IRG is to develop enabling technologies, including humanized mouse model, high throughput single cell assay, high resolution proteonomics, glycomics, metabolomics and cellular mechanics platforms, to study infectious diseases using novel approaches and from new angles. The ID-IRG has developed an integrated, cutting-edge research program with participation of both MIT faculty and investigators from Singapore universities and research institutes.

 
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Major Goals

  • Advance basic understanding of pathogen-host interactions at the molecular, cellular and systems levels.
  • Use this basic knowledge to develop diagnostics, prophylactics and therapeutics for specific diseases.
  • Train a new generation of scientific leaders in infectious disease research.

Major Research Areas

Humanized Mouse Model
To develop mice with human immune systems so as to better study human immune responses to pathogens, with a long-term goal of vaccine development.

High Throughput Single Cell Assays and T Cell Epitope Identification
To develop and use novel high throughput single cell assays to study human immune responses in greater details and to identify antigenic epitopes from specific pathogens.

Influenza—Proteonomics, Glycomics, and Metabolomics
To study host-pathogen interactions using –omics approaches with specific aims in biomarker discovery and therapeutics development.

Influenza—Lung Damage Repair
To study lung damage repair following influenza virus infection.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus
To elucidate relationships among virus sequences, host responses and disease severity for vaccine and therapeutics development.

Mycobacterium Tuberculosis
To elucidate how environmental Mycobacteria affect the efficacy for BCG vaccination.

Malaria
 To elucidate how Plasmodium infection affect cellular mechanics and contribute to disease pathology.

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