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Dan Barouch | |
---|---|
Born | [1] | February 4, 1973
Citizenship | American |
Education | M.D. and Ph.D. |
Alma mater | Harvard and Oxford |
Spouse(s) | Fina C. Barouch, M.D. |
Children | Susanna and Natalie |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Virology |
Institutions | Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Harvard Medical School, Ragon Institute MIT and Harvard [2] |
Dan Hung Barouch is an American physician, immunologist, and virologist. He is known for his work on the pathogenesis and immunology of viral infections and the development of vaccine strategies for global infectious diseases. His research led to the development of vaccine candidates for HIV, Zika, influenza, tuberculosis, monkeypox, and COVID-19, including the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. [3] [4] [5] [6] He was named the founding director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and is a founding member and a steering committee member at the Ragon Institute. [7]
Barouch is Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center [8] and the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. [9] He is also affiliated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery. [10]
Barouch has authored over 400 original peer-reviewed research articles and 50 review articles on infectious diseases, viral pathogenesis, immune responses, and vaccine development. [11] [12] [13] He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020 [14] [15] [16] and received the King Faisal Prize in Medicine in 2023 for his work. [17]
Barouch grew up in Potsdam, New York, in an academic family with his mother, a biochemist; his father, a professor of mathematics and computer science; and his sister, now a cardiologist. [18]
He attended Harvard College at the age of 16. Barouch received his B.A. in biochemistry from Harvard University summa cum laude at the age of 20 in 1993. In 1995, at the age of 22, he received his Ph.D. in immunology from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. [19]
A scholar and a violinist, [20] [19] Barouch's time at Oxford University under the mentorship of Sir Andrew McMichael shaped his interests in virology and immunology. Barouch returned to Boston in 1995 and attended Havard Medical School.
In 1999, he received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School with highest honors summa cum laude. He completed clinical residency training in internal medicine and fellowship training in infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. [21]
In 2002, he established his independent research laboratory at age 29 at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston. [22]
Barouch is married to Fina C. Barouch, M.D., an ophthalmologist and vitreoretinal surgeon. [23] They have two daughters, Susanna and Natalie, and reside in Newton, Massachusetts.
Barouch is a professor of medicine and professor of immunology at Harvard Medical School. [24] In 2012, he was named the founding director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. [25] [26] He is also a founding member and a steering committee member at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University. [27] [28] He was appointed the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 2020. [29]
Barouch started to develop vaccine candidates against HIV and other infectious diseases while in graduate school and medical school. He launched his independent research laboratory at age 29. His early work involved the creation of vaccine platform technologies, including adjuvanted DNA vaccines and novel adenoviral vectors, including Ad26. [20] [30] [31]
In 2000, while still in medical school, Barouch started researching the development of an HIV vaccine. [32] He reported that HIV vaccines reduced viral loads in preclinical studies but that viral escape from immune responses could undermine immune control. [33] In 2002, he published that a candidate HIV vaccine can suppress the virus in preclinical studies for a period of two years. [34] In 2006, he developed adenovirus vaccine vectors that evaded suppression by baseline vector immunity. [35] [36] His research provided the scientific foundation for the Johnson & Johnson HIV vaccine candidate, including the creation of a set of "mosaic" proteins with Bette Korber, which improve immune responses against multiple strains of the virus. [27] [37]
Barouch was promoted to Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 2010. Two years later, in 2012, he became the Founding Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. [38]
From 2015 to 2018, Barouch co-led the HIV-V-0004 APPROACH study, testing the mosaic Ad26/Env vaccine in human subjects. [39] This vaccine was then advanced into clinical efficacy trials in Africa, North America, South America, and Europe with the National Institutes of Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Janssen, and others. [27] [40]
Barouch has also worked on immunologic strategies to cure HIV infection. [41] In 2016 and 2018, he demonstrated the potential of combining therapeutic vaccines or broadly neutralizing antibodies with immune activators, also known as the "shock and kill" strategy. [42] Barouch has also discussed his research and has commented on the research of others in the media. [43]
In 2016, Barouch developed and tested the first Zika vaccines in preclinical studies. [44] [45] These vaccines entered first-in-human trials later that year. [46]
In January 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Barouch began studying the immunology and pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 infection and developing a COVID-19 vaccine in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson. This vaccine underwent rapid preclinical testing [47] and advanced into initial clinical trials by July 2020. [48] Subsequently, this vaccine was tested in the large international phase 3 efficacy trial ENSEMBLE and showed efficacy in humans. [49] The resulting vaccine, known as the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, or Ad26.COV2.S, was approved by WHO, FDA, and multiple countries throughout the world and commenced global distribution in February 2021. This vaccine was the third COVID-19 vaccine authorized for use in the United States and the first vaccine deployed in South Africa, as reported in the SISONKE study in healthcare workers. [50] The utilization of this vaccine was lower than the mRNA vaccines in the western world, but it was deployed extensively in the developing world, given its efficacy, durability, and stability without freezing, with over 200 million doses distributed and has been credited with saving nearly 1 million lives in 2021. [51] [52]
Barouch's research also involved studying the immunology of SARS-CoV-2 infection, the immunogenicity and durability of mRNA vaccines and boosters, and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on immune escape and vaccine efficacy. He also defined immune correlates of protection for COVID-19 vaccines. In February 2021, Barouch co-authored a paper on how a certain level of COVID-19 antibodies may provide lasting protection against the virus. [53] [54] In 2021 and 2022, he also co-authored papers exploring how COVID-19 antibodies protect based on blood samples provided by 4300 employees of SpaceX, together with CEO Elon Musk. [55]
Throughout the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and boosters in the United States, Barouch reported the immune kinetics and durability induced by mRNA and Ad26 vaccines and the impact of viral variants in evading antibody responses while preserving T cell responses. [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] In 2022, he reported that the bivalent ancestral+BA.5 mRNA boosters were limited by immune imprinting to the ancestral strain, which contributed to the FDA decision in 2023 to remove the ancestral strain for the XBB.1.5 mRNA booster. [61] In 2023, Barouch served as part of a panel of experts advising the Biden administration on the potential risk of another Omicron-like wave of COVID-19. [62] In 2024, he demonstrated the importance of mucosal immunity for improving vaccine protection against COVID-19. [63] [64]
In 2009, Barouch was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. [65]
In 2013, he became a member of the Association of American Physicians. [21]
In 2016, Barouch was named honorary researcher at the centre de Recherche, Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal [66] and was named a Bostonian of the Year by the Boston Globe Magazine . [44]
In 2017, Barouch was named the Investigator of the Year by the Massachusetts Society for Medical Research and received the Drexel Prize in Immunology from the Drexel University College of Medicine.[ citation needed ]
In 2019, Barouch received the Best Academic Research Team Vaccine Industry Excellence Award at the World Vaccine Congress. [21]
In 2020 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
In 2021, he was awarded the George Ledlie Prize for his work towards the creation of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, [67] and was awarded the Bostonians of the Year Award by The Boston Globe. [68]
In 2023, he was jointly awarded the 2023 King Faisal Prize for Medicine with vaccinologist Sarah Gilbert. [69] [1]
Adenoviruses are medium-sized, nonenveloped viruses with an icosahedral nucleocapsid containing a double-stranded DNA genome. Their name derives from their initial isolation from human adenoids in 1953.
In immunology, seroconversion is the development of specific antibodies in the blood serum as a result of infection or immunization, including vaccination. During infection or immunization, antigens enter the blood, and the immune system begins to produce antibodies in response. Before seroconversion, the antigen itself may or may not be detectable, but the antibody is absent. During seroconversion, the antibody is present but not yet detectable. After seroconversion, the antibody is detectable by standard techniques and remains detectable unless the individual seroreverts, in a phenomenon called seroreversion, or loss of antibody detectability, which can occur due to weakening of the immune system or decreasing antibody concentrations over time. Seroconversion refers the production of specific antibodies against specific antigens, meaning that a single infection could cause multiple waves of seroconversion against different antigens. Similarly, a single antigen could cause multiple waves of seroconversion with different classes of antibodies. For example, most antigens prompt seroconversion for the IgM class of antibodies first, and subsequently the IgG class.
Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), sometimes less precisely called immune enhancement or disease enhancement, is a phenomenon in which binding of a virus to suboptimal antibodies enhances its entry into host cells, followed by its replication. The suboptimal antibodies can result from natural infection or from vaccination. ADE may cause enhanced respiratory disease, but is not limited to respiratory disease. It has been observed in HIV, RSV, and Dengue virus and is monitored for in vaccine development.
Thumbi Ndung’u is a Kenyan-born HIV/AIDS researcher. He is the deputy director (Science) and a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) in Durban, South Africa. He is Professor of Infectious Diseases in the Division of Immunity and Infection, University College London. He is Professor and Victor Daitz Chair in HIV/TB Research and Scientific Director of the HIV Pathogenesis Programme (HPP) at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal. He holds the South African Research Chair in Systems Biology of HIV/AIDS. He is an adjunct professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the Programme Director of the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence (SANTHE), a research and capacity building initiative funded by the African Academy of Sciences and the Wellcome Trust.
Peter John Morland Openshaw, is a British clinician and scientist specialising in lung immunology, particularly defence against viral infections. He trained in lung diseases and undertook a PhD in immunology before establishing a laboratory at St Mary's Hospital Medical School. He created the academic department of Respiratory Medicine and the Centre for Respiratory Infection at Imperial College and was elected President of the British Society for Immunology in 2014.
Edward Thomas Ryan is an American microbiologist, immunologist, and physician at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. Ryan served as president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from 2009 to 2010. Ryan is Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Director of Global Infectious Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Ryan's research and clinical focus has been on infectious diseases associated with residing in, immigrating from, or traveling through resource-limited areas. Ryan is a Fellow of the American Society of Microbiology, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the American College of Physicians, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Akiko Iwasaki is a Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. She is also a principal investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research interests include innate immunity, autophagy, inflammasomes, sexually transmitted infections, herpes simplex virus, human papillomavirus, respiratory virus infections, influenza infection, T cell immunity, commensal bacteria, COVID-19, and long COVID.
Gary J. Nabel is an American virologist and immunologist. He is the President and chief executive officer of ModeX Therapeutics in Natick, Massachusetts. He was the founding director of Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Igor Koralnik is an American physician, neurologist and scientist. He is one of the first physicians to study the neurologic complications caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and is a leading researcher in the investigation of the polyomavirus JC, which causes progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a disease of the central nervous system that occurs in immunosuppressed individuals.
A Zika virus vaccine is designed to prevent the symptoms and complications of Zika virus infection in humans. As Zika virus infection of pregnant women may result in congenital defects in the newborn, the vaccine will attempt to protect against congenital Zika syndrome during the current or any future outbreak. As of April 2019, no vaccines have been approved for clinical use, however a number of vaccines are currently in clinical trials. The goal of a Zika virus vaccine is to produce specific antibodies against the Zika virus to prevent infection and severe disease. The challenges in developing a safe and effective vaccine include limiting side effects such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, a potential consequence of Zika virus infection. Additionally, as dengue virus is closely related to Zika virus, the vaccine needs to minimize the possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement of dengue virus infection.
Sir Andrew James McMichael, is an immunologist, Professor of Molecular Medicine, and previously Director of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is particularly known for his work on T cell responses to viral infections such as influenza and HIV.
Bette Korber is an American computational biologist focusing on the molecular biology and population genetics of the HIV virus that causes infection and eventually AIDS. She has contributed heavily to efforts to obtain an effective HIV vaccine. She created a database at Los Alamos National Laboratory that has enabled her to design novel mosaic HIV vaccines, one of which is currently in human testing in Africa. The database contains thousands of HIV genome sequences and related data.
Shane Patrick Crotty is a professor of immunology in the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
Hanneke Schuitemaker is a Dutch virologist, the Global Head of Viral Vaccine Discovery and Translational Medicine at Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Vaccines & Prevention, and a Professor of Virology at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers of the University of Amsterdam. She has been involved in the development of Janssen's Ebola vaccine and is involved in the development of a universal flu vaccine, HIV vaccine, RSV vaccine and COVID-19 vaccine.
Marylyn Martina Addo is a German infectiologist who is a Professor and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) Head of Infectious Disease at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Addo has developed and tested vaccinations that protect people from Ebola virus disease and the MERS coronavirus EMC/2012. She is currently developing a viral vector based COVID-19 vaccine.
Galit Alter is an immunologist and virologist, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and group leader at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. She is known for her work on the expansion of particular natural killer cell subtypes in response to HIV-1 infection. She has also contributed to the understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers correlate with sustained humoral protection, including identifying coordinated immune cell-antibody signatures that may predict COVID-19 infection outcome.
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