Isaac Ming-Cheng Chiu

Isaac Chiu is a Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. He received his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Harvard College in 2002. During that time, he worked with Professor Jack L. Strominger on MHCI trafficking in B cells and at the immune synapse. He received a PhD in Immunology at Harvard Medical School in 2009, where he worked with Dr. Michael Carroll on defining the roles of neuroimmune interactions in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). He did a first postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Tom Maniatis in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at Harvard University, working on transcriptional profiling of microglia. He then joined the lab of Professor Clifford Woolf at Boston Children’s Hospital in the FM kirby Neurobiology Center for a postdoctoral fellowship, where he discovered that bacterial pathogens directly activate nociceptive sensory neurons to produce pain and induce neuroimmune modulation of host defense.

Dr. Chiu started his faculty position at Harvard medical school in the Department of Immunology as Assistant Professor in 2014, was promoted to Associate professor in 2021, and to Professor in 2024. Dr. Chiu's research focuses on interactions between the nervous and immune system in pain, host defense and immunity. His lab has shown that sensory neurons directly sense bacterial mediators and immune mediators to produce pain and itch. Nociceptors signal to macrophages, neutrophils and T cells via neuropeptides including calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) to mediate immunity in the skin, gut, and lungs. His lab has uncovered mechanisms by which bacteria invade the meninges and brain, and the role of gasdermins in CNS degeneration. He has received an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award, and Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative Ben Barres Early Career Award.