Deborah Hung joins Broad core faculty
Deborah Hung
Photo by Maria Nemchuk
Deborah Hung, a clinician and researcher who probes the molecular underpinnings of infectious disease by fusing chemistry, biology and genetics, has joined the Broad Institute's core faculty. She brings to the Broad a notable expertise in applying high-throughput approaches to understand the biological interplay between humans and pathogens, such as the gram-negative bacterium Vibrio cholerae, and to pinpoint weak spots that may be exploited therapeutically. Deborah also begins an appointment as assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School this coming fall.
It is increasingly apparent that humans face an endless barrage of infectious microbes — new ones that have never before been encountered and old ones that have cleverly redesigned themselves to evade the current arsenal of antibiotics. Deborah and her colleagues seek to address this threatening mix of new and old by applying the latest technologies in chemical biology and bacterial genomics to carefully dissect pathogen behavior in the context of the host, rather than a test tube. This in vivo-based approach promises to provide a more accurate picture of the most critical steps in bacterial infection. Together with her coworkers Emily Pierson, the laboratory manager, Anne Clatworthy, a postdoctoral research fellow, and Jim Gomez, a research scientist, Deborah plans to study several bacterial pathogens, including Vibrio cholerae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
“The key interactions between bacterial pathogens and their unwitting hosts are still poorly understood,” said Deborah. “Genome-scale methods in chemical biology and bacterial genomics provide a promising way for us to define this relationship. And the collaborative, cross-disciplinary environment at the Broad is a great place for us to do this work.”
After earning her Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University, where she worked with Stuart Schreiber, Deborah pursued her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of John Mekalanos at Harvard Medical School. She designed a high-throughput chemical screen to identify a small molecule that inhibits two major virulence factors of Vibrio cholerae, a microbe that causes an acute intestinal diarrhea. When given orally, the inhibitor can protect mice from the effects of V. cholerae infection. Although cholera outbreaks are relatively rare in the United States, the disease is epidemic in many non-industrialized countries where water sanitation is poor.
In addition to her distinguished record of skillfully combining chemistry and genomics, Deborah is also trained as a physician. She received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and then completed both a residency in internal medicine and fellowships in infectious disease and critical care medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Currently, she holds positions as an infectious disease physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and an attending critical care physician in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
