Benjamin E Gewurz, MD, PhD

Dr. Ben Gewurz completed his undergraduate at Stanford University, his MD and Immunology PhD at Harvard Medical School, residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and infectious disease fellowship at the Brigham & Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Gewurz performed his graduate research training in the laboratories of Hidde Ploegh and Don Wiley, studying human cytomegalovirus evasion of the MHC Class I antigen presentation pathway. He performed post-doctoral training with Elliott Kieff, studying Epstein-Barr virus oncogene LMP1 activation of the NF-kB pathway.

Dr. Gewurz joined the faculty in 2012 and is now an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Associate Chair of the Harvard Graduate Program in Virology. He is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and a founding member of the Center for Integrative Solutions to Infectious Diseases. He is an associate member of the Harvard Department of Microbiology. He is a Member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.

Dr. Gewurz’s laboratory studies Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) pathogenesis and cancer biology. EBV persistently infects >95% of adults, making it one of the most successful viruses worldwide. EBV causes infectious mononucleosis, is a major trigger for multiple sclerosis and causes ~200,000 cancers per year. Intriguingly, these include B cell, T cell, NK cell lymphomas, gastric and nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Studies of EBV/host interactions promise to reveal key aspects of EBV pathogenesis and of B lymphocyte biology.

The Gewurz laboratory uses CRISPR/Cas9, proteomic, genomic and metabolomic approaches to investigate the EBV/host relationship and subversion of key cellular oncogenic pathways. We study the relationship between EBV and multiple human malignancies, including lymphomas, gastric and nasopharyngeal carcinoma, how EBV subverts innate and adaptive immune pathways, epigenetic and metabolic pathways to establish latency and ultimately to reactivate its lytic cycle. The Gewurz lab uses whole exome approaches to investigate rare primary immunodeficiency syndromes manifest by chronic active EBV and EBV-associated lymphomas.