Research Interests
Infection and Immunity, Tuberculosis, Host-directed therapy, Macrophage biology, Bacterial pathogenesis
Research Focus Teams
Tuberculosis, Lung Disease, Antimicrobial resistance
Departments
Contact
Email: jim.sun@ubc.ca
Office Phone: 604-822-5856
Office number: 2506
Publications
Lab Website
Dr. Jim Sun joined the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UBC in January 2024, and is a core member of the Prepare for Pandemics through Advanced Research in Evolution (PrePARE) Research Cluster. Dr. Sun received his BSc (Biochemistry, 2006) and PhD (Experimental Medicine, 2012) from the University of British Columbia, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2017, Dr. Sun was recruited to the University of Ottawa to start his own independent research group, where he successfully established a dynamic tuberculosis host-pathogen research program and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. His most significant research contributions have revealed key insights to how Mycobacterium tuberculosis evades our immune response, development of novel treatments for pathogenic infections, and the discovery of the tuberculosis necrotizing toxin. Dr. Sun’s research has important implications for advancing host-directed therapies to treat tuberculosis. His honours include the American Society for Microbiology Infection and Immunity Exceptional Early-Career PI (2022), the Lung Health Foundation Young Investigator Award (2021), the Canadian Society for Immunology New Investigator Merit Award (2020), and the Pfizer Canada Research Award (2018 & 2020).
The Sun laboratory is focused on understanding host immunity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other bacterial infections. Infection with M. tuberculosis causes tuberculosis (TB), which remains the leading cause of infectious diseases related deaths worldwide. Multi-drug resistant TB is also the single largest disease component of the global antimicrobial resistance crisis, a pandemic lurking in the shadows that is predicted to cause 10 million death per year by 2050. Our goal is to develop novel host-directed therapies for TB and other bacterial infections. Targeting and harnessing the power of our own immune cells to kill invading pathogens offers unique promise to overcome the development of antibiotic resistance.
My research program has two major pillars: Knowledge generation: identify and functionally characterize novel host and/or bacterial targets suitable for drug development using a multidisciplinary approach.Drug discovery: promising host and/or bacterial targets are then put through a preclinical drug development pipeline with the goal of clinical translation. Our long-term vision is to apply our discoveries not only to address TB, but also to combat emerging pathogens and antimicrobial resistance.
For more information about specific research projects, please visit https://www.thesunlab.ca/research/projects