Raif Salim Geha MD

Prof. Raif Geha has been studying primary immunodeficiency disease for almost 40 years. He has extensive experience in the characterization of Primary Immuno-deficiencies (PIDs), including examination of molecular aspects and signal transduction pathways. He has also described a number of novel genes that cause or contribute to PIDs. These include genes that encode for SAP, CD40L, WIP, MALT1, LRBA, TACI, NEIL3 and TFR1. He has established in collaboration with Dr. Luigi Notarangelo, a research network between his program at the Harvard Medical School and Middle Eastern and North African countries.

His laboratory is characterizing five novel genes discovered recently through this network. He has developed a number of transgenic mouse models of PIDs, that include mice deficient in WIP, CIP4, SLP-76, LRRC8A, and that carry heterozygous mutations IkBa and TACI and shared these mice with investigators all over the world. As Immunology Division Chief at Children’s Prof. Geha is responsible for overseeing both the clinical care and research on patients with primary immunodeficiency. In this function, he sees many patients with immunodeficiency syndromes of unclear etiology. Under a T32 grant that he holds, he has trained a large number of investigators in the PID field. They include Talal Chatila (Boston), Ramsay Fuleihan (Chicago), Jordan Orange (Baylor), Tomohiro Morio (Tokyo), Isabella Quinti (Rome), Abdallah Al-Angari (Riyadh) and Isil Barlan (Istanbul).