Raphael (Donghyun) Park joins Scripps Research Fellows Program to develop novel ways of addressing tuberculosis

Park’s expertise in high-resolution imaging will enable a detailed look at bacterial pathogenesis.

September 07, 2022

LA JOLLA, CA—Raphael (Donghyun) Park, PhD, joined the Scripps Research Fellows Program in August 2022 to establish a laboratory that will unravel the mechanisms of tuberculosis, as well as design therapies to stop the spread of disease in developing nations. 

Park completed his PhD in Microbial Pathogenesis at the Microbial Sciences Institute at Yale University, where he studied under the supervision of Jun Liu, PhD. During his training, Park established a high-throughput, cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) pipeline to investigate how pathogens create niches within hosts and how the immune system neutralizes the invader. Cryo-ET is a high-resolution imaging technique that produces a three-dimensional reconstruction of biological samples, similar to a CT scan of the human body.

“The innovations in cryo-ET developed by Raphael have revealed remarkable new insights into the secretion systems employed by bacterial pathogens to evade host immunity, and they should guide the development of new antibiotics,” says Howard Hang, PhD, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology and Chair of the Scripps Research Fellows Search Committee. “Raphael’s expertise will strengthen the existing cryo-ET community here and complement our outstanding structural studies in host-pathogen interactions.”

As a Scripps Research Fellow, Park will be mentored jointly by Hang and structural biologist Andrew Ward, PhD. His first focus is to study how the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis infects cells and leads to the development of disease. The ultimate goal is to use the knowledge gained to design new antibacterial medicines.

“I spent about ten years of my life in the Philippines, and I noticed just how deadly tuberculosis and other infectious diseases can be,” says Park. “This motivated me to uncover how the bacterial nanomachinery causes infection and how we might be able to target this critical process therapeutically.

The Scripps Research Fellows Program was launched in 2017 to accelerate talented candidates toward tenure-track academic faculty positions. The program is designed to instill leadership in promising young scholars who have distinguished themselves with original research ideas during their graduate studies.

Meet the other Fellows and learn more about the program here.

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