NEWS

We want to express our deep sadness over the recent and violent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor in the US—three of the latest victims of the systemic racism that continues to plague our society. The last week has brought into crisp focus the deep racism that remains pervasive throughout our country, […]

To understand how any given disease affects the body, scientists need a wide array of tools. One of the most valuable and indispensable instruments in their toolkit are clinical samples—small amounts of blood, urine, mucus, spit, and tissue that can be used to study a disease in a patient.  For COVID-19, a disease that has an […]

As part of its COVID-19 response, the Ragon Institute is working within the Massachusetts Consortium for Pathogen Readiness, a multi-institutional initiative convened by Harvard Medical School and the Ragon Institute, to combat the disease and to prepare for future outbreaks. Ragon Institute director, Bruce Walker, MD, serves as co-director and founding member, and many of […]

Image: Scanning electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 virus emerging from cells. Image courtesy of NIAID   Cambridge, MA, April 22, 2020: The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, a world leader in human immunology and infectious diseases, is leading efforts to understand and combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of the global COVID-19 pandemic. […]

Boston, March 30, 2020 – The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard today announced it has received a gift from Nancy Zimmerman to help fund development of an early response coronavirus (COVID-19) diagnostic that would support medical and other front-line professionals and help manage the current pandemic. Specifically, the funding from Ms. Zimmerman, who […]

Alex Shalek, Ragon associate member, has a new study published today in Nature Medicine, Integrated Single-Cell Analysis of Multicellular Immune Dynamics during Hyper-Acute HIV-1 Infection. This study uses single-cell RNA sequencing to understand immune system dynamics after acute HIV infection, with samples provided from the FRESH (Females Rising through Education, Support, and Health) study in […]

The Ragon Institute, with its commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and patient-focused research, has begun a multipronged approach towards understanding, treating, and preventing infections with the new human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Ragon Institute scientists are playing  a leadership role in mobilizing an unprecedented Boston-Cambridge consortium dedicated to collaborative efforts to ending the growing pandemic, bringing together Harvard, […]

  Alum for the Ride   Darrell Irvine, PhD, Ragon Steering Committee Member and MIT Professor of Materials Science and Biological Engineering, has just published a paper in Nature Medicine showing a way to engineer an increased immune response to the vaccine adjuvant aluminum hydroxide, also known as alum, in an HIV vaccine given to […]

Galit Alter has published a new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation entitled “Selective induction of antibody effector functional responses using MF59-adjuvanted vaccination.” This study is taking a new approach to determining flu vaccine efficacy, examining not the antigen, a piece of flu virus that is the main component of the vaccine, but the supporting […]

Ragon faculty member Musie Ghebremichael, PhD, recently published a BMC paper entitled “A comparison of machine learning techniques for classification of HIV patients with antiretroviral therapy-induced mitochondrial toxicity from those without mitochondrial toxicity.” Additional authors include Jong Lee, Elijah Paintsil, and Vivek Gopalakrishnan, of University of Massachusetts, Lowell; Yale University; and The Johns Hopkins University, […]

The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard received $10 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to move towards drug-free HIV remission.      HIV  HIV remains a major global health challenge, with UNAIDS reporting 37.9 million people living with HIV and 1.7 million new cases each year. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) allows people […]

New research center will help advance TB vaccine development For centuries tuberculosis (TB) has been a major global health problem and the world’s leading infectious killer.  To combat this deadly disease, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently announced new contract awards to establish […]

A new approach that targets young immune cells may also work for creating vaccines against the flu, dengue, malaria and hepatitis C October 31, 2019 LA JOLLA, CA A collaborative team of scientists has made a successful proof-of-principle demonstration of an advanced HIV vaccine strategy—an approach that may also work in protecting people from an […]

Scientists from the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, led by Dr. Aaron Schmidt, Assistant Professor of Microbiology, have partnered with the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) on a nation-wide, multidisciplinary program to develop a more universally protective influenza vaccine.   The Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers (CIVICs) program, driven and supported by the […]

Ragon Institute harnesses new knowledge about HIV to reinvent immunology   Mary Todd Bergman | Harvard Correspondent   Originally posted on The Harvard Gazette, September 19, 2019   With a promising HIV vaccine already in clinical trials, and research revealing how some people can naturally control HIV without medications, the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, […]