John Mekalanos
· ProfessorHarvard University · Strategy
Active 1977–2026
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About
John Mekalanos is the Lehman Professor at Harvard Medical School and has served as Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology (formerly Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) since 1996. He has received numerous honors including election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology, the Eli Lilly Award, the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, and the City of Medicine Award. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the Drexel Medicine Prize in Infectious Disease and also received the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award for Biomedical Research. Dr. Mekalanos has served on the FDA Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biologics and has consulted for various governmental and private agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, The International Vaccine Institute, the National Academy of Sciences, Massachusetts Public Health Biological Laboratories, and the US-Japan Cooperative Medical Science Program. His research focuses on multiple facets of bacterial pathogenesis, emphasizing genetic and functional genomic approaches to explore virulence gene regulation and host-pathogen interactions. His laboratory has developed many genetic tools that have been widely used in the field for decades, establishing fundamentally new approaches to understanding bacterial virulence from the gene to the genomic levels. The Mekalanos group has made classic contributions including identifying regulatory factors controlling…
Research topics
- Biology
- Microbiology
- Virology
- Cell biology
- Genetics
- Immunology
- Computational biology
- Biochemistry
Selected publications
Cell · 2020 · 248 citations
Molecular Cell · 2020 · 210 citations
Microbiota-targeted maternal antibodies protect neonates from enteric infection
Nature · 2020 · 149 citations
Gut complement induced by the microbiota combats pathogens and spares commensals
Cell · 2024-01-26 · 81 citations
articleOpen accessProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022-06-08 · 49 citations
articleOpen accessSchwannomas are slow-growing benign neoplasms that develop throughout the body causing pain, sensory/motor dysfunction, and death. Because bacterial immunotherapy has been used in the treatment of some malignant neoplasms, we evaluated attenuated Salmonella typhimurium strains as immunotherapies for benign murine schwannomas. Several bacterial strains were tested, including VNP20009, a highly attenuated strain that was previously shown to be safe in human subjects with advanced malignant neoplas…
Recent grants
NIH · $3.9M · 2017
NIH · $11.5M · 2020
NIH · $1.6M · 2002
Frequent coauthors
- 75 shared
Shah M. Faruque
Poultry Research Institute
- 60 shared
Matthew K. Waldor
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- 40 shared
R. John Collier
- 39 shared
Stephen B. Calderwood
Massachusetts General Hospital
- 35 shared
Michelle Dziejman
University of Rochester Medical Center
- 32 shared
Eric J. Rubin
- 29 shared
Joseph D. Mougous
University of Washington
- 29 shared
Casey A. Gifford
Stanford University
Labs
Research on bacterial pathogenesis, focusing on genetic and functional genomic approaches to explore virulence gene regulation and host-pathogen interactions.
Education
Ph.D.
University of California Los Angeles
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