Fellow

Dr. Md. Taufiqur Rahman Bhuiyan

(Fellow, 2023)

After completing M.Sc from University of Dhaka in Microbiology, I did my PhD in a collaborative program between icddr,b and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. My thesis title was “Humoral and cellular immune responses to Helicobacter pylori”in Bangladeshi children and adults that may be related to protection”. I have been working at the icddr,b as an “Senior Scientist” in the Mucosal Immunology & Vaccinology laboratory. My major interest in the last few years has been made in microbiology and immunology of enteric infections, eg. V. cholerae, ETEC, and Helicobacter pylori. I am currently working on functional T cell studies in understanding the immunological basis of different enteric infections especially in cholera and ETEC in Bangladesh and related to protection. The major goal of these studies is to understand the T-B cell interaction, and the type of T cells that are mainly responsible for B cell help. I am also involved with oral cholera vaccination clinical trial, where we are evaluating humoral and adaptive immune responses in different age groups of participants of Bangladesh.

Study of gastric and duodenal biopsies is very relevant to better deciphering the direct mucosal immune responses in infectious diseases. Using immunohistochemistry and also high throughput techniques, we have been able to directly demonstrate the activation of T and B cells and the innate factors. I am also involved to study mucosal and systemic immune responses to enterotoxigenic Escherchia coli infection and relation to protection, that includes evaluating if ETEC diarrhea induces antigen specific acute B and T cell responses as well as memory responses which are long lasting.

Another important area has been made is in the development of diagnostic tests for detection of H. pylori antigens and cholera diagnostic test. As the incidence of H. pylori infection and cholera is very high in these endemic settings, this has been extremely important to diagnose this infection in children and adults. I have experience in mentoring and supervising MSc and PhD students in the Immunology Unit. I spent a year at 2014 to 2015 as a “Research Scholar” at Harvard Medical school in collaboration with icddr, b and analyzing immune responses in blood and intestinal samples of patients with cholera by using nanotechnology and characterization of single cells, flow cytometry, microarray analysis, transcriptional profiling, antibody assessment, and memory B and T cell responses. In addition, I have also very good experience about systematic review eg: cochrane review. I have published 150 articles in different high impact peer-reviewed journals.

During pandemic time of COVID-19, my research area is focusing on measuring antibody responses in cases and contacts of Bangladeshi population to know the seroprevalence. We are also focusing on in-depth cellular immune responses in different groups of COVID-19 patients and comparing immune responses with healthy participants. Recently, I have been trained at Harvard Medical School and John Hopkins University on Multiplexed Bead Array based on Luminex for serosurveillance analyses in Cholera and Shigella as well as we are applying this technology for measuring correlate of protection.