Dan Barouch: The Immunologist Leading The Search For A COVID-19 Vaccine

Dan Barouch is an American physician, immunologist, and virologist. He is known for his work on the pathogenesis and immunology of viral infections and the development of vaccine strategies for global infectious diseases.

Dr Dan Barouch received his PhD in immunology from Oxford University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is currently the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine and Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery.

His laboratory focuses on studying the immunology and virology of HIV-1 infection and developing novel vaccine and eradication strategies. His group has also applied their vaccine expertise to preclinical and clinical studies of other infectious diseases of global significance, including Zika virus, tuberculosis, and most recently the coronavirus

As the Director of the Centre for Virology and Vaccine Research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre (BIDMC), Barouch and his team began developing a COVID-19 vaccine in January after Chinese scientists released the viral genome of the coronavirus. Barouch’s laboratory collaborated with Johnson and Johnson to develop a non-replicating adenovirus COVID-19 vaccine candidate that entered clinical trials in July 2020. He is among the group of researchers backed by the WHO to develop a cure for COVID-19.

Dan and his team are working tirelessly to develop a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus that has ravaged the world and left thousands dead. Though the journey is tough, there is hope that his team will be among the first to create a vaccine.