Barry Bloom

Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Professor of Public Health; Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

bbloom@hsph.harvard.edu

Department Website

Bio

A leading scientist in the areas of infectious diseases, vaccines, and global health and former consultant to the White House, Dr. Barry Bloom continues to pursue an active interest in bench science as the principal investigator of a laboratory researching the immune response to tuberculosis, a disease that claims more than two million lives each year.

He has been extensively involved with the World Health Organization (WHO) for more than 40 years. He is currently Chair of the Technical and Research Advisory Committee to the Global Programme on Malaria at WHO and has been a member of the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research and chaired the WHO Committees on Leprosy Research and Tuberculosis Research, and the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. Dr. Bloom serves on the editorial board of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

Dr. Bloom currently serves on the Ellison Medical Foundation Scientific Advisory Board and the Wellcome Trust Pathogens, Immunology and Population Health Strategy Committee. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Advisory Council of the Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research.

His past service includes membership on the National Advisory Council of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Center for Infectious Diseases of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Advisory Board of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health, as well as the Governing Board of the Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Bloom was the founding chair of the board of trustees for the International Vaccine Institute in South Korea, which is devoted to promoting vaccine development for children in the developing world. He has chaired the Vaccine Advisory Committee of UNAIDS, where he played a critical role in the debate surrounding the ethics of AIDS vaccine trials. He was also a member of the US AIDS Research Committee.

Dr. Bloom was Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Chan School of Public Health from 1998 to 2008, and he is currently a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard Chan School.

Dr. Bloom is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Institutes of Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Philosophical Society.

Research Interests: infectious diseases, vaccines, global health; the immune response to tuberculosis

Selected Publications

Books

  • Bloom BR and Glade P, eds. In vitro methods in cell‑mediated immunity. Academic Press, pp. 606. 1971.
  • Bloom BR and David JR, eds. “In vitro Methods in Cell‑Mediated and Tumor Immunity” Academic Press. 1976.
  • Bloom BR and Cerami A, eds. Biomedical Science and the Third World: Under the Volcano. W. Frohlich Award Conference, New York Academy of Sciences, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. vol.569, 334pp; 1989.
  • Bloom BR, Tuberculosis: Pathogenesis, Protection and Control. ASM Press, 637 pp.; 1994.
  • Lederberg, J. (Editor-in-Chief), Alexander M, Bloom BR, Hopwood D, Hull R, Iglewiski BH, Laskin AI, Oliver SG, Schaechter M and Sommers WC. (Associate Editors), Encyclopedia of Microbiology, Academic Press, 2000
  • Bloom BR, Lambert PH. The Vaccine Book. Academic Press, 436 pp, 2003.

Recent Articles and Chapters

  • Lipsitch M, Plotkin JB, Simonsen L, Bloom B. Evolution, safety, and highly pathogenic influenza viruses. 2012 Jun 22; 336:1529-31.
  • Ganmaa D, Giovannucci E, Bloom BR, Fawzi W, Burr W, Batbaatar D, Sumberzul N, Holick MF, Willett WC. Vitamin D, tuberculin skin test conversion, and latent tuberculosis in Mongolian school-age children: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled feasibility trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2012 Aug; 96:391-6.
  • Lipsitch M, Bloom BR. Rethinking biosafety in research on potential pandemic pathogens. MBio 2012 Oct; 3(5). Doi:pii: e00360-12.
  • Laxminarayan R, Arrow K, Jamison D, Bloom BR. Public health. From financing to fevers: lessons of an antimalarial subsidy program. Science. 2012 Nov 2: 338:615-6.
  • Teles RM, Graeber TG, Krutzik SR, Montoya D, Schenk M, Lee DJ, Komisopoulou E, Kelly-Scumpia K, Chun R, Iyer SS, Sarno EN, Rea TH, Hewison M, Adams JS, Popper SJ, Relman DA, Stenger S, Bloom BR, Cheng G, Modlin RL. Type I Interferon Suppresses Type II Interferon-Triggered Human Anti-Mycobacterial Responses. 2013 Feb 28. [Epub ahead of print].
  • Bishai W, Sullivan Z, Bloom BR, Andersen P. Bettering BCG: a tough task for a TB vaccine? Nature Medicine. 2013 Apr;19(4):410-1.
  • Modlin RL, Bloom BR. TB or not TB: that is no longer the question. Science Translational Medicine. 2013 Nov 27;5(213):213.
  • Bloom BR, Marcuse E, Mnookin S. Addressing vaccine hesitancy. Science. 2014 Apr 25;322(6182):339.
  • Paniz Mondolfi AE, Bloom BR. Jacinto Convit (1913-2014). Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2014 Aug;91(2):435-6.
  • Montoya D, Inkeles MS, Liu PT, Realegeno S, Teles RM, Vaidya P, Munoz MA, Schenk M, Swindell WR, Chun R, Zavala K, Hewison M, Adams JS, Horvath S, Pellegrini M, Bloom BR, Modlin RL. IL-32 is a molecular marker of a host defense network in human tuberculosis. Sci Transl Med. 2014 Aug 20;6(250):250ra114.
  • Modlin RL, Bloom BR.TB or not TB: that is no longer the question. Sci Transl Med. 2013 Nov 27;5(213):213sr6. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3007402. Review.
  • Mechanisms of Defense against Intracellular Pathogens Mediated by Human Macrophages. Bloom BR, Modlin RL. Microbiol Spectr. 2016 Jun;4(3). doi: 10.1128/microbiolspec.MCHD-0006-2015. PMID: 27337485
  • Rethinking how to address the world’s largest infectious killer in the world’s largest country. Bloom BR. J Public Health Policy. 2016 May 6. doi: 10.1057/jphp.2016.16.
  • Back to the future: Rethinking global control of tuberculosis. Bloom BR, Atun R. Sci Transl Med. 2016 Mar 9;8(329):329ps7. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf2944. Review. PMID: 26962154
  • Lipoarabinomannan-Responsive Polycytotoxic T Cells Are Associated with Protection in Human Tuberculosis. Busch M, Herzmann C, Kallert S, Zimmermann A, Höfer C, Mayer D, Zenk SF, Muche R, Lange C, Bloom BR, Modlin RL, Stenger S; TBornotTB Network. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2016 Aug 1;194(3):345-55. doi: 10.1164/rccm.201509-1746OC.

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