Carrie Lucas, PhD

Dr. Carrie L. Lucas received her PhD from Harvard Medical School and her postdoctoral training from the National Institutes of Health, NIAID. The Lucas laboratory is devoted to discovering new and translationally relevant principles of immunology by defining and studying human genetic immune disorders. Combining human genomics, in vitro studies using primary patient cells, and in vivo mouse modeling approaches, her team seeks to gain incisive basic and translational insights starting with patients. The lab’s focus on primary immunodeficiencies has largely centered around phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling and disease mechanisms and treatments in patients with mutations in PI3K subunits, including ‘Activated PI3K-delta Syndrome’ (APDS) and ‘Inactivated PI3K-gamma Syndrome’ (IPGS). More recently, the lab has added an emphasis on studying inflammatory diseases, including SARS-CoV-2-associated ‘multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children’ (MIS-C) and vaccine-associated myocarditis. A major current effort centers on new biology illuminated by a monogenic autoinflammatory disease the Lucas lab named ‘Deficiency in ELF4, X-linked’ (DEX). Each of our research projects starts with an initial focus on dissecting pediatric immune diseases and aims to leverage that knowledge for new therapies, including precision medicine approaches in monogenic diseases, which has recently been achieved with FDA approval of targeted therapy in APDS. The rare diseases studied uniquely enable elucidation of in-depth mechanistic insights into human immunology, thereby providing translational knowledge to improve understanding and treatment of a broader set of common diseases with immune involvement.