Hara Levy, MD, MMSc

Position title: Professor of Pediatrics

Organ System/Disease Focus: Pulmonary disease, with a primary focus on cystic fibrosis, chronic airway infection, pediatric lung disease, newborn screening, and precision genomics. Dr. Levy's program links CF epidemiology and health disparities with patient-derived cellular and molecular studies to understand why children with CF develop divergent pulmonary outcomes, particularly in relation to Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection.
Aligned Research Focus: Stem cell and regenerative medicine alignment: innate immune-cell development and plasticity; monocyte/macrophage and neutrophil programming; epigenetic and metabolic regulation of immune-cell state, fate, and function; epithelial-immune crosstalk in lung injury and repair; patient-derived disease modeling; and integration of genomics, epigenomics, single-cell approaches, and optical metabolic imaging.

Research Description:

Dr. Levy’s translational research program uses cystic fibrosis (CF) as a model to understand how inherited epithelial ion-channel dysfunction and chronic airway infection reprogram innate immune cells and alter lung repair. Her group focuses on monocytes/macrophages and neutrophils, two hematopoietic lineages central to tissue injury, inflammation, resolution, and regeneration. Using patient-derived cells and integrated epigenomic, transcriptomic, and metabolic approaches – including CUT&Tag/CUT&RUN for histone marks, single-cell profiling, flow cytometry, cytokine assays, and optical metabolic imaging – her laboratory studies how CFTR dysfunction and exposure to Pseudomonas aeruginosa establish durable immune-cell states not fully corrected by CFTR modulators. This work is directly aligned with regenerative medicine because it addresses how cell-intrinsic programming and inflammatory microenvironments shape immune-cell plasticity, epithelial injury, and the capacity for lung repair. Through SCRMC, Dr. Levy aims to build collaborations that integrate stem/progenitor-cell and organoid platforms with patient-based immune profiling to identify mechanisms and therapeutic targets that promote healthier airway regeneration and more precise treatment for children with CF and related lung diseases.

Selected Publications:

Zhang X, Moore CM, Harmacek LD, Domenico J, Rangaraj VR, Ideozu JE, Knapp JR, Woods KJ, Jump S, Jia S, Prokop JW, Bowler R, Hessner MJ, Gelfand EW, Levy H. CFTR-mediated monocyte/macrophage dysfunction revealed by cystic fibrosis proband-parent comparisons. JCI Insight. 2022 Mar 22;7(6):e152186. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.152186. PMID: 35315363; PMCID: PMC8986072.

Saferali A, Qiao D, Kim W, Raraigh K, Levy H, Diaz AA, Cutting GR, Cho MH, Hersh CP; NHLBI TransOmics in Precision Medicine (TOPMed). CFTR variants are associated with chronic bronchitis in smokers. Eur Respir J. 2022 Aug 10;60(2):2101994. doi: 10.1183/13993003.01994-2021. PMID: 34996830; PMCID: PMC9840463.

Ideozu JE, Liu M, Riley-Gillis BM, Paladugu SR, Rahimov F, Krishnan P, Tripathi R, Dorr P, Levy H, Singh A, Waring JF, Vasanthakumar A. Diversity of CFTR variants across ancestries characterized using 454,727 UK Biobank whole-exome sequences. Genome Med. 2024 Mar 21;16(1):43. doi: 10.1186/s13073-024-01316-5. PMID: 38515211; PMCID: PMC10956269.

Coates BM, Levy H, Dennery P, Mariani TJ. Federal Research Funding for Child Lung Health and Disease. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2025 Aug 4. doi: 10.1513/AnnalsATS.202504-430VP. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40758477.