THE HUNG LABORATORY
Combining chemical and genomic approaches to study pathogenicity and identify novel therapeutic prospects for infectious diseases
The Hung Lab combines chemical and genomic approaches to define host-pathogen interactions and to reveal the critical pressure points of infectious disease. By using small organic molecules and applying systematic genetic perturbations, the lab hopes to gain new insight into bacterial responses to host immunity and chemotherapy and to establish new therapeutic paradigms for a variety of devastating pathogens, including carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Photo Credit: Maria Nemchuk, Broad Institute
Deborah T. Hung
Deb Hung is a core faculty member of the Broad Institute, where she serves as the co-director of the Infectious Disease and Microbiome Program. She is also a professor in the Department of Genetics and the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She holds positions as an infectious disease physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and is an attending critical care physician in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is trained as a physician, chemist, and geneticist.
Hung combines chemical and genomic approaches to define host–pathogen interactions and to reveal essential in vivo gene functions of pathogens that may be potential therapeutic targets for antimicrobial development. By deploying small organic molecules on a genome-wide scale to both perturb and understand bacterial infection, she seeks to identify new therapeutic prospects for a variety of devastating pathogens, including Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Hung’s honors include the 2009 American Society for Microbiology Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award, in recognition of her discovery of a new kind of chemical inhibitor of V. cholerae, a Pew Biomedical Scholars award, and a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Scientist Development Award. She is the director of the Collaborative Hub for Early Antibiotic Discovery at the Broad, part of the global initiative Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X). Hung also serves on the scientific steering committee of the New England Regional Center for Excellence in Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, as well as the scientific advisory board for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Antibiotic Resistance Project.
She received her A.B. from Harvard University, Ph.D. from Harvard University, and M.D. from Harvard Medical School. She completed a residency in internal medicine and fellowships in infectious disease and critical care medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.