Infectious pursuit

At Georgia State University, Mukesh Kumar is one of the researchers advancing the front lines of virus research — uncovering how deadly pathogens spread, how our immune systems respond and how these discoveries can prepare us for the next outbreak.

West Nile, Zika, dengue and COVID-19 — these are all viruses that pose some of the most complex and deadly threats to global health. For Mukesh Kumar, they are the driving force behind his research.

As a leading virologist and immunologist at Georgia State, Kumar specializes in studying virus interactions in the human immune system. He investigates why some infections become severe and works to develop new strategies to treat the next possible outbreak.

For more than a decade, Kumar has been studying and combating some of the deadliest viruses on the planet. Much of this work has centered on flaviviruses — a family of mosquito-borne viruses, including West Nile, Zika and dengue — known for causing severe illness, from brain inflammation to devastating neurological damage. His expertise in neurotropic flaviviruses, and his focus on how RNA viruses can slip past the body’s defenses, helped prepare him for one of the biggest challenges of his career: the global COVID-19 pandemic.

“The pandemic showed us how quickly a virus can disrupt the world, but it also taught us how science can address that challenge,” Kumar says. “The lessons we learned aren’t just about COVID-19. They’re the building blocks that will help us respond more effectively next time.”

It’s been five years since Kumar and his team had to quickly shift focus to investigate how SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — spreads, how the body responds and why some people get much sicker than others.

In the earliest days of the pandemic, when Atlanta’s streets were deserted and most of the country was under lockdown, Kumar, an associate professor of biology and director of the Molecular Basis of Disease Area of Focus at Georgia State, worked alongside other key researchers and mobilized his lab in the Petit Science Center. He knew time was critical. While much of the world stayed home, Kumar’s team stepped into the unknown, working long hours inside a high-containment lab to understand a virus that brought global life to a standstill.

“We were already working with infectious viruses and had the infrastructure in place,” Kumar says. “That allowed us to pivot quickly when the pandemic hit.”

The Fight Evolves

His lab’s high-containment setup and prior experience meant they were one of the few academic groups ready to take on live SARS-CoV-2 research in the earliest days. Inside, his team worked with live viruses, cut off from the outside world except for a lab phone and an iPad. 

Kumar had already spent more than a decade studying viral infections and vaccine development, a mission fueled by his Ph.D. in Medical Virology from the University of Hawaii. With over 3,000 citations to his name, his work continues to drive breakthroughs in infectious disease research.

At the heart of this mission was a dedicated team of student researchers, gaining hands-on experience with cutting-edge science during one of the most critical health challenges of our time. These students weren’t just learning about the virus — they were actively preparing to become the next generation of scientists, ready to face whatever comes next.

“I walked into the building with not a soul but the security guard and entered the multilevel security lab,” says Shannon Stone (Ph.D. ’25), a recent Georgia State graduate who worked in Kumar’s lab. “To even begin work, I had to suit up: sterile scrubs, gloves, respiratory gear, full protection.

“It was unnerving. But I knew what I was doing was for the greater good — and I was proud to be part of it.”

No Room for Error

The ongoing progress didn’t come easy. The team often logged seven-day weeks, running multiple studies at once under strict biosafety protocols.

“There were days I worked 16 hours,” Stone says, describing experiments studying how COVID-19 moved through the brain and lungs.

Alongside her, Amany Elsharkawy (Ph.D. ’25), who began her doctoral studies at Georgia State in 2020 researching cancer before joining Kumar’s lab, ran complex genetic analyses to track how different variants triggered inflammation — one of the key drivers behind severe respiratory symptoms.

“From handling tissue samples to running data through gene expression models, it was nonstop,” Elsharkawy says.

Elsharkawy describes the work as intense and mentally demanding.

“I had to make sure every step — from tissue preservation to RNA extraction to differential expression analysis — was flawless,” she says. “Even a small misstep could compromise the results.”

Despite the pressure, she calls it the most rewarding project of her academic career so far.

Breakthroughs and Backing

That intensity didn’t go unnoticed. GeoVax, a Georgia-based biotechnology company developing next-generation vaccines, invested $500,000 to fund preclinical research in Kumar’s lab.

“They believed in the science we were doing,” Kumar says. “It gave us the freedom to move fast.”

Conventional vaccines, particularly mRNA-based ones, don’t always provide strong protection for cancer patients, transplant recipients and others with compromised immunity — leaving a major gap in disease prevention.

The partnership allowed the team to accelerate testing of a new vaccine designed specifically for people with weakened immune systems that targets several parts of the virus. Using a model engineered to express human ACE2 receptors — the same receptors the virus uses to enter human cells — the researchers found that a single dose provided full protection even against deadly variants like Beta and Delta.

“When we saw that level of protection from just one dose, it was a big moment,” Kumar says. “It suggested we might be able to offer real protection to people who’ve been left behind by current vaccines.”

For Stone, the results felt personal.

“After all those long days and weekends in the lab, to see it work — that was incredibly validating,” she says. “Especially knowing this could help people who are still living in fear every day.”

Five years later, Kumar and his team’s research continues to bear fruit. His studies, built on years of infectious disease research, could help redefine how the COVID virus is treated and prevented — especially for immunocompromised people who remain at elevated risk.

Earlier this year, findings were published in the journal Vaccines, giving the results additional weight in the scientific community and signaling the potential for broader, more durable protection in the years to come.

“When you see your work published like that, it hits you,” Stone says. “You realize this isn’t just lab data. It’s something that could actually reach people and make a difference.”

“GeoVax is now conducting several clinical trials,” Kumar says, adding the team’s role in the project has shifted from hands-on lab work to providing data and scientific support as the trials progress.

Solving the Inflammation Puzzle

While one arm of the lab focused on vaccine development, another was zeroing in on a different mystery: Why some COVID-19 variants trigger more severe lung inflammation than others. Much of that work fell to Elsharkawy, who studied how different variants disrupted normal gene activity in lung cells — offering clues to why some infections trigger more aggressive immune responses than others.

“It was my job to figure out what genes were turning on and off during infection, and why that mattered,” she says.

What they found was striking. Certain variants, including Beta and XBB.1.5, triggered a specific protein in the lungs called ZBP1. This protein normally helps the body fight viruses by setting off an immune response. But with these variants, ZBP1 overreacts, leading to too much inflammation in the lungs, which can cause more harm than good.

“It’s like the body tries to fight too hard,” Elsharkawy says. “And in the process, it ends up causing damage.”

Kumar says the inflammation study offered vital insights into how newer variants can intensify disease in vulnerable patients. He credits his team’s diligence with helping uncover a molecular mechanism driving severe lung damage. The discovery of ZBP1 as a potential therapeutic target, he notes, opens the door to new approaches that go beyond vaccines or antivirals.

A Foundation for the Future

Building on the lessons learned from recent research, Kumar is optimistic that the momentum will drive breakthroughs across a wide range of infectious diseases, opening new doors for prevention and treatment.

“We’re building that foundation,” he says. “The tools we’re developing and the insights we’re gaining will help us prepare for whatever comes next.”

Stone agrees. For her, the work is far from over but the path ahead feels more purposeful.

“This has changed how I think about science, about urgency, about public health,” she says. “I think we’ve shown what’s possible when people stay curious and committed — even when the world feels like it’s shutting down.”

ON THE EDGE OF OUTBREAKS: TACKLING EMERGING THREATS

The transfer of viruses from animals to humans could play a significant role in the emergence of future pandemics, and researchers at Georgia State are working to understand potential threats.

Professor of Biology Julia Hilliard, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, is leading groundbreaking research focused on countering and combating zoonotic viruses like the B virus, which typically infects monkeys but can cause severe neurological disease in humans.

To develop innovative treatments and diagnostics, Hilliard’s lab explores how these viruses impact the nervous system and manipulate immune defenses. Under her leadership, the university’s National B Virus Resource Center provides critical 24/7 diagnostic support for this rare but potentially fatal infection, serving researchers and healthcare providers worldwide.

Hilliard is also a co-inventor on a recent patent for a novel antiviral approach that boosts the body’s natural defenses against viruses like Zika — highlighting the lab’s commitment to creating innovative approaches to strengthening the immune system instead of attacking viruses directly.

Zika virus is a mosquito-borne illness that usually causes mild symptoms like fever, rash and joint pain. It’s drawn global attention for its link to severe birth defects when contracted during pregnancy.

PREDICTING THE SPREAD: THE HIDDEN POWER OF MODELS IN MEDICINE

Georgia State researchers in the School of Public Health are using data-driven models to track and guard against deadly outbreaks.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gerardo Chowell, a mathematical epidemiologist at Georgia State University, produced daily forecasts of cases and deaths for countries around the world. That work led to the creation of a new modeling approach — the “sub-epidemic framework” — which treats large outbreaks as a series of overlapping smaller ones. This method has improved the accuracy of short-term forecasts and is now being used to track diseases well beyond COVID, including HIV, Mpox and even diabetes.

"We use mathematical models to understand how an outbreak unfolds — what causes new cases, who’s affected and what interventions may control the epidemic," Chowell says.

Chowell and his team — including graduate students from the Department of Population Health Sciences — are applying the model to HIV in the U.S., where different modes of transmission and regional variation make forecasting complex. The model breaks that complexity down, helping researchers anticipate where progress is likely and where setbacks could grow.

Some areas appear on track to meet national HIV reduction goals by 2030. Others are not. New projections also show global diabetes-related mortality increasing by around 10 percent by 2030, compared to 2019 figures. In both cases, the data highlights growing disparities and reinforces the need for reliable data and tailored public health responses.

"Our goal is to develop reliable forecasts which can allow for time to act and help prevent worst-case scenarios for these diseases," Chowell says.

He and his team will continue transforming data into insights that protect lives — work he believes will become even more impactful as advances in AI bring increasingly powerful forecasting tools to public health.

Photography by Carolyn Richardson

Noelle Toumey Reetz contributed to this article.