Principal Investigator
Laurence G. Rahme, M.Sc., Ph.D.
John Lawrence MGH Research Scholar 2020-2025
Dr. Laurence Rahme is Professor of Surgery, Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Molecular Surgical Laboratory at the Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
Dr. Rahme received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Naples, Italy, and earned her M.Sc. in Molecular Genetics from the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics, CNR and University of Naples, Italy, and her Ph.D. in molecular host-microbe interactions from the University of California Berkeley, at Berkeley, CA. She conducted her postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Molecular Biology, MGH and Harvard Medical School (HMS) Department of Genetics. Dr. Rahme is an elected Fellow of The American Academy of Microbiology, the Scientific Founder of Spero Therapeutics and the MGH Research Scholar 2020 - 2025.
The MGH Research Scholar award provides unrestricted funding for forward-thinking medical researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital:
Dr. Rahme has a distinguished record of academic achievement in bacterial regulatory systems that govern virulence and host responses to infection. She has an international reputation for her pioneering work on the development of anti-virulence drugs as an alternative to antibiotics and the use of multi-host systems to study host-pathogen interactions. Anti-virulence drugs are expected to promote antibiotic stewardship and curb antibiotic resistance while preserving the beneficial flora. Moreover, her group was the first to develop a pipeline for predictive biomarkers for infection outcomes in burns and trauma patients as a novel personalized therapy approach. As such, her pioneering research bridges clinical and basic science and opens new avenues for novel therapeutics. She is the leading inventor of more than 15 patents and patent applications. Her lab is funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DoD), Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF), among others.