Dr. Deborah Hung

Biography

Deborah Hung is a physician-scientist combining chemical genomic approaches to define host-pathogen interactions that reveal critical pressure points in infectious disease. By deploying small organic molecules at a genome-wide scale to perturb and understand bacterial infection, she hopes to identify new therapeutic prospects for a variety of devastating pathogens, including Vibrio cholerae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Deborah received her Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University, where she worked in Stuart Schreiber’s laboratory to characterize the chemical biological properties of discodermolide, a small molecule isolated from marine sponges that stabilizes microtubules. She pursued postdoctoral research in the laboratory of John Mekalanos at Harvard Medical School, using high-throughput chemical screens to identify a small molecule that inhibits major virulence factors of Vibrio cholerae, a gram-negative bacterium that causes acute intestinal diarrhea. When given orally, this inhibitor protects mice from the effects of V. cholerae infection. Although cholera outbreaks are relatively rare in the United States, the disease remains epidemic in non-industrialized countries with poor water sanitation. Deborah received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed residency in internal medicine and fellowships in infectious disease and critical care medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. She currently holds positions as an infectious disease physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and as an attending critical care physician in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Research Interests

Experience