Jessica Hargarten
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Cryptococcus is a fungus found in the environment that most people inhale without consequence, but in some it causes pneumonia or meningoencephalitis, an infection of the brain and its surrounding membranes, and it is estimated to kill about 180,000 people worldwide each year. It is classically considered an opportunistic infection of people with weakened immunity, yet it also strikes patients who were previously healthy with no known immune defect.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Genetics
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Cryptococcus
cryptococcosis
cryptococcal meningoencephalitis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Characterize how deficiency in MTOR, the signaling enzyme that senses nutrients and controls immune cell growth and metabolism, affects susceptibility to Cryptococcus infection using established murine models of pulmonary and central nervous system cryptococcosis.
- Determine how the specific rare MTOR variants identified by whole exome sequencing in previously healthy cryptococcosis patients alter cell signaling and function in those patients' own lymphocytes.
- Define which protective immune responses are lost when MTOR signaling is impaired, linking the gene variants found in patients to the mechanisms that normally clear Cryptococcus.
More about the research
T cells are known to be required for protection, but the molecular reasons some people cannot control this fungus are largely unknown. This project investigates one candidate explanation found in patients' own genomes.
Why it matters
Cryptococcal disease kills roughly 180,000 people a year, and clinicians currently cannot explain why some previously healthy patients develop it. Linking rare MTOR variants to failed fungal clearance could widen the definition of who is at risk, allowing earlier recognition of vulnerable patients, and because MTOR signaling can be modulated with drugs, it may point toward treatments that adjust cell-specific immunity in patients whose infections trace to this pathway.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Wendy Watford
University of Georgia, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify which immune cell types are required for protection when CD4+ T cell-deficient mice, a model of AIDS, are vaccinated with ZNF2oe, a harmless filament-forming Cryptococcus strain that overproduces the Znf2 regulator.
Stuart Levitz
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test how well each of seven recombinant cryptococcal proteins, combined with the adjuvant CAF01, protects mice against virulent Cryptococcus strains found around the world.
Ronda Rolfes
Georgetown University, DC·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether inositol pyrophosphates, energy-rich signaling molecules, control the PHO pathway that maintains phosphate balance when Candida albicans faces phosphate limitation.
The school
Rutgers University-New Brunswick: 57 labs on PI Pages, $837M a year on research, 713 research doctorates a year.
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