Ragon Institute

Wong Lab

Intercellular Communication, Tissue Microenvironment, Quantitative & Systems Immunology

Lab Overview

The Wong lab investigates how cells assemble and communicate to control immune responses in tissues.

The immune system mounts destructive responses to protect the host from threats, including pathogens and tumors. However, a trade-off emerges: if immune responses cause too much damage, they can compromise host tissue function. Conversely, if they fail to generate sufficient damage, the host may succumb to a given threat. How is the optimal balance achieved? The Wong lab investigates how cells communicate with one another and their surrounding tissue environment to accurately control the magnitude of immune responses, both in time and space. To this end, we combine the tools of immunology with interdisciplinary methods—including high-resolution fluorescence microscopy, computational approaches, and gene manipulations—to resolve, model, and perturb the control of immune responses in intact tissues. Ultimately, we aim to understand how subtle shifts in control can lead to widely divergent host outcomes, including the successful elimination of threats, tolerance, autoimmunity, chronic infection, and cancer.

Lab Website

Harikesh Wong, PhD

Principal Investigator

Affiliation

  • Core Member, Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, MIT

About

Hari completed his PhD in Cell Biology at the University of Toronto. He then pursued his post-doctoral training with Dr. Ronald N. Germain at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 2022, Hari opened his independent lab as a Core Member of the Ragon Institute and an Assistant Professor in the MIT Department of Biology. The Wong lab sits at the interface of Immunology and Systems Biology.

Related Research Foci

  • Computational Science
  • Fundamental Immunology

Related Areas of Study

  • Autoimmune
  • Infectious Disease
  • Cancer

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Selected Publications

SpectraPlex: A powerful toolbox for advanced 3D high-multiplex imaging.

Roberti, J.M., Hecht, F., Gai, E., Steinmetz, I., Holzmeister, S., Straka, T., Wong, H.S., Alvarez, L.

Nature Methods (in press), 2024

January 1, 2024

Non-coding sequence variation reveals fragility in interleukin 2 feedback circuitry and shapes autoimmune disease risk.

Simeonov, D.R.+, Park, K.+, Cortez, J. T., Young, A., Li, Z., Nguyen, V., Umhoefer, J., Indart, A., Woo, J.M., Anderson, M.S., Tsang, J.S., Germain, R.N.*, Marson, A.M.*, Wong, H.S.* +Equal contribution *Co-senior authorship

BioRxiv, 2023

January 1, 2023

Mesoscale T cell antigen discrimination emerges from intercellular feedback.

Wong, H.S. & Germain, R.N.

Trends in Immunology, 2021

January 1, 2021

Robust control of the adaptive immune system

Wong HS & Germain RN

2018 Semin Immunol 36, 17–27

January 1, 2018

Commensal-driven immune zonation of the liver promotes host defence

Gola A, Dorrington MG, Speranza E, Sala C, Shih RM, Radtke AJ, Wong HS, Baptista AP, Hernandez JM, Castellani G., Fraser IDC, Germain RN

2021 Nature 589, 131-136

January 1, 2021

A local regulatory T cell feedback circuit maintains immune homeostasis by pruning self-activated T cells

Wong HS, Park K, Gola A, Baptista AP, Miller CH, Deep D, Lou M, Boyd LF, Rudensky AY, Savage PA, Altan-Bonnet G, Tsang JS, Germain RN

2021 Cell 184, 1–17

January 1, 2021

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