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Thirteen project teams involving 70 scientists from 29 institutions are collaborating on basic research targeted at preparedness for future emerging pathogens that could threaten human health.
Thirteen project teams involving 70 scientists from 29 institutions are collaborating on basic research targeted at preparedness for future emerging pathogens that could threaten human health.


The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is committing $100 million to a new Emerging Pathogens Initiative to support basic research targeted at preparedness for emerging pathogens that could threaten human health in the future. Thirteen project teams involving 70 scientists from 29 institutions will collaborate on the research. 

“We are optimistic that this initiative will help these scientists develop new, untested approaches that can reveal how pathogens work and how the human immune system responds to pathogen infection,” said HHMI Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer Leslie Vosshall. “With this program, we hope to gain some of the knowledge and tools we need to get a scientific head start on future epidemics.”

During the COVID pandemic, many in the global scientific community learned as much as they could – as fast as they could – about the underlying SARS-CoV-2 virus. Labs retooled, researchers stretched in new directions, shared information openly, and began new collaborations to better understand a deadly pathogen that was rapidly evolving. The scientific community also began engaging more broadly with questions about oversight of research on existing and potential pathogens and how to make sure this important work is done as safely as possible.

As some HHMI labs began shifting their attention to COVID, HHMI launched a research pilot, investing $35 million in four collaborative research projects aimed at understanding more about COVID and SARS-CoV-2. That work motivated the Institute to do more.

“We were excited by the idea of catalyzing this collaborative research on a larger scale – focusing on novel approaches to understanding the biology of emerging pathogens and the interactions of the human immune system with infections to further the basic science needed for rapid and durable responses to future pandemics,” said HHMI Senior Scientific Officer Dennis McKearin.

Last year, HHMI announced plans to accept proposals for the newly created Emerging Pathogens Initiative, a program that will run for three years with a goal of accelerating research into the origins, mechanisms, and evolution of emerging pathogens that could threaten human health. This one-time competition invited proposals from HHMI Investigators for projects to be conducted independently or in collaboration with a diverse spectrum of scientists at US institutions and across the globe. The 13 projects selected involve 70 scientists at 29 institutions. They tackle timely questions, including implications for diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines against a wide range of worrisome pathogens. 

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HHMI is the largest private biomedical research institution in the nation. Our scientists make discoveries that advance human health and our fundamental understanding of biology. We also invest in transforming science education into a creative, inclusive endeavor that reflects the excitement of research. HHMI’s headquarters are located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC.

Projects and Scientific Collaborators

Focus area: Akkermansia muciniphila as a mucosal vaccine platform for emerging pathogens

Lead Investigator: Gregory Barton, HHMI, University of California, Berkeley

Collaborators
Russell Vance, HHMI, University of California, Berkeley
Raphael H. Valdivia, Duke University
Lauren Davey, University of Victoria
Aaron Schmidt, Harvard Medical School and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard

Focus area: Developing modular, multifunctional therapeutics from “parts lists” for a broad spectrum of RNA viruses

Lead Investigator: Carolyn R. Bertozzi, HHMI, Stanford University

Collaborators
Taia Wang, Stanford University
Christopher Barnes, Stanford University
Peter S. Kim, Stanford University

Focus area: Infectious disease vaccines that do not directly target microbes

Lead Investigator: Richard A. Flavell, HHMI, Yale University

Collaborators
George Dimopoulos, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Erol Fikrig, Yale University
Maudry Laurent Rolle, Yale University
Aaron Ring, Yale University
Photini Sinnis, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Drew Weissman, University of Pennsylvania
Heidi J. Zapata, Yale School of Medicine

Focus area: Targeting cell envelope biosynthesis in Borrelia for diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccine discovery

Lead Investigator: Christine Jacobs-Wagner, HHMI, Stanford University

Collaborators
Laura M.K. Dassama, Stanford University
Naima G. Sharaf, Stanford University
Steven Banik, Stanford University
Ansuman Satpathy, Stanford University School of Medicine

Focus area: Pathogenic brain states: cells and circuits involved in altered brain function after non-central nervous system infection

Lead Investigator: Michelle Monje, HHMI, Stanford University

Collaborators
Akiko Iwasaki, HHMI, Yale University
Beth Stevens, HHMI, Boston Children’s Hospital
Karl Deisseroth, HHMI, Stanford University
Erin Gibson, Stanford University
Catherine Blish, Stanford University
Shane Liddelow, New York University
Ukpong Eyo, University of Virginia

Focus area: Decoding the mitochondrial proteomes of six pathogenic protozoa

Lead Investigator: Vamsi K. Mootha, HHMI, Massachusetts General Hospital

Collaborators
John Samuelson, Boston University
Inna Afasizheva, Boston University
Ruslan Afasizhev, Boston University
Manoj Duraisingh, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Namrata Udeshi, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Luke Chao, Massachusetts General Hospital

Focus area: Targeting essential surface-accessible processes of bacterial gut pathogens with designed peptides

Lead Investigator: Joseph D. Mougous, HHMI, University of Washington

Collaborators
Gaurav Bhardwaj, University of Washington
Ana A. Weil, University of Washington

Focus area: Elucidating rapidly evolving virulence factors and their functions from bacterial pathogens

Lead Investigator: Kim Orth, HHMI, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Collaborators
Josephine Ni, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Tamia Harris-Tryon, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Qian Cong, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Kevin Forsberg, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Focus area: Merging the technologies of RNA biology and enhanced biosafety to create next generation broad spectrum RNA-based antiviral therapies

Lead Investigator: Anna Marie Pyle, HHMI, Yale University

Collaborators
Elke Mühlberger, Boston University National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories
Anthony Griffiths, Boston University National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories
Daniel Cifuentes, Boston University
Gustavo Mostoslavsky, Boston University

Focus area: Natural product discovery for combating emerging pathogens

Lead Investigator: Benjamin Tu, HHMI, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Collaborators
Yi Tang, University of California, Los Angeles
Hosea M. Nelson, California Institute of Technology
Jue D. (Jade) Wang, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Jose A. Rodriguez, University of California, Los Angeles

Focus area: Investigating and engineering the avian and human antibody response to target emerging influenza viruses

Lead Investigator: Wilfred A. van der Donk, HHMI, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Collaborators
Beth Stadtmueller, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Nicholas Wu, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Angad P. Mehta, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Jenna Guthmiller, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Focus area: Exploiting circadian rhythms in anti-parasite immunity

Lead Investigator: Russell Vance, University of California, Berkeley

Collaborator
Filipa Rijo-Ferreira, University of California, Berkeley

Focus area: Building a toolbox for individualized jumbo-phage therapy against antibiotic-resistant infections

Lead Investigator: Elizabeth Villa, HHMI, University of California, San Diego

Collaborators
Kevin D. Corbett, University of California, San Diego
John Glass, J. Craig Venter Institute
Justin Meyer, University of California, San Diego
Kit Pogliano, University of California, San Diego
Joe Pogliano, University of California, San Diego
David Pride, University of California, San Diego
Paul Turner, Yale University