MI2025 – Lisa Ng

Title:
Viral warfare: frontiers in cellular mechanisms and therapeutic interventions

Abstract:
Global warming is expanding the habitats of mosquito vectors and contributing to an increase in mosquito-borne diseases. Arboviral diseases are resurging globally, with Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) demonstrating a troubling capacity for large-scale outbreaks. In 2024, CHIKV re-emerged in Réunion Island with 47,500 cases and 12 deaths reported by May 2025. Transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, CHIKV has become a major concern due to the highly debilitating chronic joint disease it causes. While current control measures, including vaccines, insecticides, and antimicrobial therapies, have made strides, their effectiveness is increasingly compromised by antimicrobial resistance, insecticide resistance or tolerance. These challenges underscore the urgent need for alternative strategies to control transmission and mitigate the growing threat of mosquito-borne diseases in a warming world. I will describe the body of work over the past 2 decades on identifying the specific immune cell populations involved in CHIKV infection, understanding the mechanisms of host-virus interaction and opening new avenues for immunological therapeutics against chikungunya. I will also discuss promising avenues for interventions such as targeting specific immune modulators in mosquito saliva presents a new frontier for therapeutic development. I will discuss on the immunomodulatory effect on human myeloid cells and its impact on CHIKV immunopathology in vivo. I will also present data on antibody responses associated with disease progression in patients infected with CHIKV. The findings suggest new targets as possible therapeutic markers for modulating immune responses and mitigating the inflammation associated with mosquito-borne viral infections.

Biography:
Prof Lisa Ng is the current Executive Director of A*STAR’s Infectious Diseases Labs (A*IDL). She also serves as Executive Director of the Biomedical Research Council, where she is involved with talent management and strategic initiatives. Over the past 25 years, Lisa has made several seminal discoveries as senior author and contributed to applications in areas of diagnostics (SARS, Influenza H5N1, CHIKV, ZIKV, COVID etc) and therapies. Lisa has contributed to more than 200 peer-reviewed papers of which 34.4% were top 10% cited (field-weighted). She is one of the Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers, Top 2% Scientists Worldwide by Stanford University, and us a SNAS (Singapore National Academy of Sciences) fellow.

Research Interests