Jaekeun Park

Research Interests

Influenza is one of the most significant causes of global mortality. Seasonal influenza epidemics have resulted in 80,000 or more annual deaths in the United States alone. Moreover, four global influenza pandemics in the past century—1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009—resulted in tens of millions of cumulative deaths. While current influenza vaccines have contributed significantly to the control of influenza, no highly efficacious influenza vaccines that are broadly and durably protective have yet been developed due to critical gaps in knowledge, including 1) incomplete understanding of immune correlates of protection, leading to 2) lack of effective vaccine strategies to induce broad and durable protection, and 3) imperfect animal models in which to evaluate vaccine efficacy.

To fill the gap in knowledge, we focus on 1) defining molecular signatures of protective or pathological lung resident memory T (TRM) cells, 2) identifying strategies for robust generation and maintenance of protective lung TRM cells, and 3) advancing current influenza animal models to reliably support influenza research on viral pathogenesis and vaccine development. Findings from the above research areas are expected to provide key insights concerning the protective or pathological mucosal immune responses to influenza viruses and help identify effective therapeutic and vaccine interventions against influenza and other zoonotic respiratory viruses.