John J. Mekalanos PhD

John Mekalanos is the Adele Lehman Professor of the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1978, he moved to the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School for postdoctoral work, and in 1981 he was recruited as an Assistant Professor in the Department. In 1986 he was promoted to Professor and in 1996 was appointed Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics (now Microbiology and Immunobiology), succeeding the late Bernard Fields in that post. 

Dr. Mekalanos has received many honors, including the Eli Lilly Award (1991), the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize (1993), the City of Medicine Award (1997), and election to the National Academy of Sciences (1998) and the American Academy of Microbiology (1999). In 2012 he was chosen as the first recipient of the Drexel Medicine Prize in Infectious Disease and he received the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award for Biomedical Research. He has been a member of the FDA Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biologics and has consulted for numerous governmental and private agencies including 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 U.S.-Japan Cooperative Medical Science Program. His research spans multiple facets of bacterial pathogenesis with an emphasis on using genetic and functional genomic approaches to explore virulence gene regulation and host-pathogen interactions. 

His laboratory has provided many genetic tools that have been successfully used in the field for decades, establishing fundamentally new approaches to understanding bacterial virulence from the gene to the genomic levels. Most recently his group discovered and characterized the Type 6 Secretion System. This new dynamic intracellular organelle of bacteria is now known to affect cell-cell interactions within the host microbiota, a process that affects the fitness of both pathogenic and commensal microorganisms. His group has also contributed to the development of prototype vaccines effective against cholera, typhoid, anthrax, and other microorganisms.