Departmental Affiliations
Center & Institute Affiliations
Subhra Chakraborty, PhD, MPH ’13, MSc, leads research to eliminate mortality and reduce morbidity due to infectious diseases by using improved diagnostics, epidemiology, and vaccines.
Contact Info
Research Interests
Enteric disease; Diarrhea; Epidemiology, Vaccine Clinical trial; Diagnostics, Immunology; Microbiome; Transcriptome; Antimicrobial resistance; Enterotoxigenic E. coli, Shigella, Cholera, Francisella tularensis; Entamoeba histolytica.
Experiences & Accomplishments
My research is focused on strategies to control diarrhea morbidity and mortality. My research objectives are 1. finding new strategies for improved enteric vaccines and understanding vaccine immunology, 2. delineating the role of the environment in occurrence and transmission of diarrheal pathogens 3. develop new diagnostic tools for resource poor settings and better understand disease epidemiology. 4. Understanding the role of host factors in severity of disease and protection from disease.
I am involved in evaluation of safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of different candidate enteric vaccines (ACE527 ETEC Vaccine, Fimbrial Tip Adhesin (CfaE) + LTR192G ETEC vaccine, Bioconjugate vaccine against Shigella flexneri 2a, Assessing Rifaximin in preventing campylobacteriosis etc). My objective in these studies is to understand the systemic and mucosal immune responses to different candidate enteric vaccines. The key focus is to find biomarkers for protective immunity using immunoproteome microarray and ELISA, role of memory B cells and T cells. My studies also involves developing and evaluating novel assays to better understand the immune responses. We also developed experimental challenge models of ETEC of Shigella in humans. These CHIM models facilitate evaluation of the efficacy of vaccines.
My other research focus is epidemiology and transmission of enteric pathogens in endemic settings. In Bangladesh, my project is to understand the role of environment in transmission and outbreaks of ETEC. In Peru, we are following a birth cohort to investigate epidemiology, risk factors and protection from ETEC disease.
I developed novel diagnostic assays which are simple, rapid and feasible to apply in the resource poor countries. These assays are currently under evaluation or being used in surveillance in India, Bangladesh, Zambia, Uganda and Nigeria.
My research also involves understanding the role of host factors - gut microbiome, intestinal and systemic inflammation, host transcriptome and other host factors in occurrence and protection from diseases.
Honors & Awards
Women’s Career Development Grant, American Society for Microbiology (ASM), 2008.
UNESCO-MIRCEN fellowship for the year 2000-2001.
Postdoctoral fellowships, Dept of Infectious disease, School of Medicine, Washington University of St. Louis. 2004-2006
Postdoctoral fellowship, Dept of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, School of Medicine, Stony Brook University. 2006-2008.
Select Publications
Publication areas: Vaccine efficacy trials, Vaccine immunology, epidemiology, host inflammation and microbiome. Most recent 5 publications are included here.
Chakraborty S, Randall A, Vickers TJ, Molina D, Harro CD, DeNearing B, Brubaker J, Sack DA, Bourgeois AL, Felgner PL, Liang X, Mani S, Wenzel H, Townsend RR, Gilmore PE, Darsley MJ, Rasko DA, Fleckenstein JM. Interrogation of a live-attenuated enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli vaccine highlights features unique to wild-type infection. Nature Publication Journal (NPJ) Vaccine. 2019 Aug 28; 4:37.
Chakraborty S, Brubaker J, Louis Bourgeois AL, Sack D. Development of a novel multiplex electrochemiluminescent-based immunoassay to aid enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli vaccine development and evaluations. J Immunol Methods, 2019; 470:6-14.
Mottram. L, Chakraborty. S, Cox E, Fleckenstein J. How genomics can be used to understand host susceptibility to enteric infection, aiding in the development of vaccines and immunotherapeutic interventions. Vaccine, 2019. pii: S0264-410X(19)30069-6.
Chakraborty S, Randall A, Vickers TJ, Molina D, Harro CD1, DeNearing B, Brubaker J, Sistrunk JR, Hazen TH, Sack DA, Bourgeois AL, Felgner PL, Liang X, Wenzel H, R. ownsend R, Gilmore PE, Mani S, Rasko DA, Fleckenstein JM. Human experimental challenge with enterotoxigenic E. coli elicits immune responses to canonical and novel antigens relevant to vaccine development. J Infect Dis, 2018, 2018(9):1436-1446 PMID: 29800314.
Chakraborty S, Harro C, DeNearing B, Brubaker. J, Bauers N, Dally. L, Flores. J, Bourgeois AL, Walker R, Sack DA. Impact of lower challenge doses of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli on clinical outcome and immune responses in humans. ?PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2018 Apr 27;12(4):e0006442.