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Clayton D. Harro Associate Professorship in International Health

Bloomberg School of Public Health

Established in 2015 by the Department of International Health in honor of Dr. Clayton D. Harro

CLAYTON D. HARRO, MD, ScD (May 30, 1964-11/24/2014) completed his medical training at Upstate Medical University, Baystate Medical Center, and The Johns Hopkins University, he served as a respected leader in vaccine development at The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Over the course of his career, Dr. Harro’s teams did pioneering work on HPV vaccines and more than 70 NIH and industry sponsored trials. He directed the Enteric Vaccine Evaluation Unit at the Center for Immunization Research, overseeing the development and evaluation of enteric vaccines for traveler’s diarrhea. Dr. Harro’s work exemplified rigorous science designed to protect people around the world from infectious diseases and was characterized by an entrepreneurial spirit and disciplined approach.

Held by Subhra Chakraborty

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.

Dr. Chakraborty’s research is focused on strategies to control diarrhea morbidity and mortality. Her 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.

She is 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). Her 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. Her studies also involves developing and evaluating novel assays to better understand the immune responses. They also developed experimental challenge models of ETEC of Shigella in humans. These CHIM models facilitate evaluation of the efficacy of vaccines.

Her other research focus is epidemiology and transmission of enteric pathogens in endemic settings. In Bangladesh, her project is to understand the role of environment in transmission and outbreaks of ETEC. In Peru, they are following a birth cohort to investigate epidemiology, risk factors and protection from ETEC disease.

She 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.

Her 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.