When it comes to current and future microbial threats, funding and the national political climate can shape the response nearly as much as biology does. That was one major theme that emerged from the Tufts Infection and Immunity Research Convergence for Innovation and Impact, hosted by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research this week on the Boston health sciences campus and the Grafton campus.
Researchers from schools across the university convened with industry leaders, scientists, and academics for the two-day symposium filled with presentations, panels, dialogue, and networking. The event was a major milestone on the university’s infection and immunity research roadmap, a strategic initiative rooted in the concept of One Health that spans the realm from basic molecular research to clinical translational research in humans and animals.
In a series of lightning talks moderated by Bernard Arulanandam, vice provost for research at Tufts, experts from The Fletcher School, Tufts University School of Medicine, and Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine discussed a range of topics, including global governance of epidemics, the ecological and evolutionary dynamics that shape the emergence of pathogens, and the molecular interactions between viruses and host cells.
Global Health Funding Adam Kamradt-Scott, Cummings Foundation Associate Professor of One Health Diplomacy at The Fletcher School, kicked off the lightning talks by highlighting a troubling trend: After a surge in global health funding during the COVID-19 pandemic, many wealthy countries have sharply cut development assistance for health from $80.3 billion in 2021 to $38.4 billion in 2024. These cuts are happening even as conflict, displacement, and ecological disruption increase disease risks.
“It’s important to acknowledge that level of spending was never sustainable for most governments, as it prioritized public health over many other competing areas of public policy,” he said. “But there has been a significant downgrade now in development assistance for health in 2024.”
He also noted that while there has been a rise in vaccine skepticism and pseudoscience, because the United States is a democracy, there is some hope that this too shall pass.
Infection in Animals In his lightning talk, Jonathan Runstadler, professor and chair of the Department of Infectious Disease and Global Health at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, highlighted how research at the veterinary school runs “from the bench to the bedside.” Researchers on the Grafton campus study how viruses, bacteria, and parasites circulate in wildlife, livestock, and companion animals long before they ever reach people.
Runstadler’s research team has spent years studying highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), tracking how it moves between bird species and occasionally spills over into mammals. This work helps scientists understand why certain viruses suddenly become more severe or widespread and how future pandemic threats may emerge. He called HPAI “the most severe panzootic that has ever been recorded.”
He also pointed out that faculty at Cummings School operate under a true One Health framework not only locally but also internationally—testing rapid diagnostics, providing access to livestock vaccines, and helping build coordinated disease surveillance systems that track infections in people and livestock.
Coexisting with Viruses Some of the most important viral threats are not short-term invaders, but lifelong companions, said Katya Heldwein, professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts School of Medicine. Herpesviruses infect nearly all humans for life, often without symptoms, yet they can cause severe or even deadly diseases when the immune system is immature, weakened, or compromised. Understanding immunity, therefore, is not only about stopping infection, but about managing long-term coexistence between viruses and the immune system.
She insisted that deep basic science research is not optional—it’s foundational. Her lab focuses on how herpesviruses enter cells, move within neurons, establish latency, and reactivate—complex processes that are not fully understood despite decades of research. But comprehending how viruses work at the molecular level is what enables smarter, safer vaccines and therapies.
Heldwein also flagged a shift in how scientists think about controlling chronic infections. Instead of trying to eradicate herpesviruses—something current antivirals cannot do—her work focuses on disarming them. This includes designing vaccine platforms that prevent viruses from reaching the nervous system and developing antibody-based therapies that block infection or transmission.
The Role of Inflammation Another shift in thinking about immunity came from Shruti Sharma, assistant professor in the Department of Immunology at Tufts School of Medicine.
“In the past few decades, the conceptual framework for immunology has seen many turnover events. One big one has been that the immune response is no longer a snapshot of a trigger response to a threat, but rather it’s a continuous process of surveillance, assessment, and responses that’s active throughout the lifespan,” she said.
Chronic disease often arises from failures to properly resolve inflammation, she said. Many major diseases—cancer, autoimmune disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular disease are best understood as consequences of persistent immune dysregulation, rather than isolated organ problems, she said.
Sharma’s research focuses on uncovering how tissue-resident innate immune cells sense danger, communicate with surrounding cells, and decide whether to promote repair or inflammation. By identifying the immune pathways that tip tissues from health to chronic disease, researchers can design more targeted immunotherapies and strategies to prevent immune breakdown before irreversible damage occurs.
The Potential of Personalized Medicine Antimicrobial resistance cannot be solved by any single discipline, said John Leong, Edith Rieva and Hyman S. Trilling Professor in Geriatric Medicine and chair of the Molecular Biology and Microbiology Department at the School of Medicine. That’s one of the reasons behind the creation of the Stuart B. Levy Center for the Integrated Management of Antimicrobial Resistance (CIMAR) at Tufts, which aims to bring together basic scientists, clinicians, engineers, educators, and policy experts.
Leong explained that many serious bacterial infections—especially those caused by highly drug-resistant organisms—are treated using laboratory tests that provide limited and imprecise information. However, he said, new research at Tufts replaces those with richer dose-response measurements, producing more reliable data about how bacteria respond to drugs.
“Antibiotic susceptibility testing is used in the laboratory to try to choose what drugs would be most effective. It’s currently based on the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), or the concentration required to completely inhibit growth. MIC can vary a lot, up to fourfold, and this inability to precisely measure MIC is at the root of the lack of value in developing treatments,” said Leong.
This improved understanding opens the door to better designed combination therapies and even personalized medicine. In chronic infections, patients may undergo treatment for months or years, providing an opportunity to deeply analyze how their specific infection responds to different drug combinations.
Connection to Chronic Conditions Advances in infection and immunity such as vaccines, antibiotics, and public health measures, are among the greatest successes in human history, said Larry Schlesinger, president and CEO of Texas Biomedical Research Institute, in his keynote address on emerging frontiers in infectious disease research. However, these gains are not guaranteed.
The resurgence of measles in the United States—after decades of control—shows how fragile progress can be when vaccination rates fall and public trust erodes. The benefits of immunology are profound, he said, but they must be actively protected and sustained.
“While COVID was an incredible example of how we respond to a new threat much faster than ever before, we are woefully unprepared for future threats,” he said. “The system in the U.S. is still taking a reactive rather than a proactive approach to pandemic preparedness. We’ll lose valuable time and lives during an outbreak if fundamental basic research and clinical developments are not done now.”
Schlesinger stressed that infectious diseases should not be seen as separate from chronic conditions like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or neurodegenerative disorders, because many infections trigger long-lasting inflammation or immune changes that contribute directly to chronic illness.
He held up hybrid research models and public-private partnerships as ways to move discoveries more efficiently from the lab to real-world impact, and he echoed Leong’s sentiment that the most progress happens when silos are broken down between disciplines, institutions, and sectors such as academia, industry, government, and nonprofits.
Lastly, Schlesinger said scientists have a responsibility to communicate effectively with the public to enhance understanding and maintain trust.
