Douglas Lauffenburger

Douglas Lauffenburger is the Ford Professor of Bioengineering in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, Department of Biology, and Department of Chemical Engineering. His lab focuses on fundamental aspects of cell dysregulation, complemented by translational efforts in identifying and testing new therapeutic ideas. Applications addressed have chiefly resided in various types of cancer (including breast, colon, lung, and pancreatic cancers along with leukemias and lymphomas), inflammatory pathologies (such as endometriosis, Crohn’s disease, colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease), and the immune system (mainly for vaccines against pathogens such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis). Lauffenburger earned a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a PhD from the University of Minnesota.

Publications

• Atyeo, C., Fischinger, S., Zohar, T., Slein, M. D., Burke, J., Loos, C., McCulloch, D. J., Newman, K. L., Wolf, C., Yu, J., Shuey, K., Feldman, J., Hauser, B. M., Lauffenburger, D., et. al. (2020). Distinct Early Serological Signatures Track with SARS-CoV-2 Survival. Immunity, 53(3), 524–532.e4.
• Brubaker, D. K., Kumar, M. P., Chiswick, E. L., Gregg, C., Starchenko, A., Vega, P. N., Southard-Smith, A. N., Simmons, A. J., Scoville, E. A., Coburn, L. A., Wilson, K. T., Lau, K. S., & Lauffenburger, D. A. (2020). An interspecies translation model implicates integrin signaling in infliximab-resistant inflammatory bowel disease. Science signaling, 13(643), eaay3258.
• Brubaker, D. K., Paulo, J. A., Sheth, S., Poulin, E. J., Popow, O., Joughin, B. A., Strasser, S. D., Starchenko, A., Gygi, S. P., Lauffenburger, D. A., & Haigis, K. M. (2019). Proteogenomic Network Analysis of Context-Specific KRAS Signaling in Mouse-to-Human Cross-Species Translation. Cell systems, 9(3), 258–270.e6.
• Brubaker, D. K., Proctor, E. A., Haigis, K. M., & Lauffenburger, D. A. (2019). Computational translation of genomic responses from experimental model systems to humans. PLoS computational biology, 15(1), e1006286.
• Kumar, M. P., Du, J., Lagoudas, G., Jiao, Y., Sawyer, A., Drummond, D. C., Lauffenburger, D. A., & Raue, A. (2018). Analysis of Single-Cell RNA-Seq Identifies Cell-Cell Communication Associated with Tumor Characteristics. Cell reports, 25(6), 1458–1468.e4.

Media

• Nov. 26, 2019: MIT News, Six MIT faculty elected 2019 AAAS Fellows.
• Mar. 20, 2019: MIT News, How tumors behave on acid.
• Mar. 6, 2018: MIT News, New study solves an arthritis drug mystery.
• Mar. 16, 2016: MIT News, Why some tumors withstand treatment.