Makedonka Mitreva, PhD, FAAM, FASTMH

Dr. Makedonka Mitreva is committed to advancing omics-driven discoveries and translating them into clinical applications that improve global health, with a particular emphasis on developing countries and underserved populations in developed nations. Her research spans two major areas: (1) combating helminth infections and (2) elucidating the role of the human microbiome in health and disease.

Leading global helminth research

Dr. Mitreva co-led the assembly and annotation of more than 100 parasite genomes through the International Helminth Genomes Consortium, a collaboration involving 53 institutions and 86 researchers. This effort enabled the largest comparative genomic study of helminths to date, uncovering key gene family expansions associated with parasitism, including immune modulation, host tissue migration, and parasite feeding. Building on these genomic resources, her laboratory developed machine learning approaches to predict drug and vaccine targets and identify diagnostic biomarkers.

In the post-genomic era, Dr. Mitreva has experimentally validated many of these computational predictions, leading to the development of field-deployable tools for monitoring drug resistance in (a) filarial nematodes, which cause river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, and (b) liver flukes, enabling surveillance of triclabendazole resistance. In parallel, she has advanced anthelmintic drug discovery by identifying novel chemical scaffolds for the treatment of intestinal and filarial nematode infections.

Most recently, Dr. Mitreva has begun leveraging insights gained from the long co-evolution of helminths with their hosts to engineer hookworms as living biotherapeutic platforms capable of producing and delivering therapeutic molecules directly within the host.

Unraveling the human microbiome

Dr. Mitreva’s microbiome research investigates the structure, function, and evolution of microbial communities and their influence on human health. Her work in this area began with the Human Microbiome Project, where she served as chair of the Shotgun Metagenomics Working Group, coordinating efforts across 22 institutions and more than 80 researchers. In this role, she led the development of widely adopted computational tools and analytical approaches for studying microbial conservation and diversification across human body sites. More recently, her research has focused on understanding how social disadvantage shapes the human microbiome, revealing neuroactive microbial pathways associated with social and environmental determinants of health in underserved communities. These findings provide important insights into the microbial mechanisms contributing to disease and establish a foundation for the development of microbiome-based therapeutics.

Dr. Mitreva is an elected member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the American Academy of Microbiology. Her contributions to parasitology and tropical medicine have been recognized with the Bailey K. Ashford Medal and the Baldwin Ward Medal.

Mitreva Lab

Dr. Mitreva leads a multi-disciplinary lab that specializes in advancing the understanding of infectious diseases and microbiome dynamics through cutting-edge genomic and computational approaches. She is available to mentor PhD, MA/MD, and MD/PhD students.

Bibliography – Makedonka Mitreva