Novalia Pishesha, PhD

PhD Overview

My research focuses on immune engineering: building molecular tools that direct the immune system with precision rather than suppressing it wholesale. Most treatments for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and lupus broadly dampen immune function. They are rarely curative and leave patients vulnerable to infection. My laboratory aims to replace this blunt approach with one that targets only the specific immune cells driving disease.

During my PhD at MIT and the Whitehead Institute, I pioneered the use of engineered red blood cells to induce antigen-specific immune tolerance, work that prevented autoimmune disease in preclinical models and was licensed to Rubius Therapeutics. As a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, I turned to nanobodies, small antibody fragments derived from camelids that are easy to engineer, stable, and inexpensive to produce. A single dose of an engineered nanobody carrying a myelin peptide and an anti-inflammatory drug both prevented and reversed paralysis in mouse models of multiple sclerosis, without impairing protective immunity.

Since 2024 I have led my own laboratory as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. We work in two directions: turning immunity off to treat autoimmune and allergic disease, and turning it on against infectious diseases including influenza and malaria. We also build imaging tools that let us watch immune responses in living organisms. Two biotechnology companies, Orthrus Therapeutics and Cerberus Therapeutics, have grown from this work.