Spring 2026 Grantee Highlight:
Shumin Tan

Shumin Tan, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University School of Medicine

The Tan Lab is working to understand why Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infections can progress differently even within a single granuloma in the lung. Differences in bacterial growth are a hallmark of tuberculosis and are thought to play an important role in treatment outcomes for this disease, which remains the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. The team is investigating how local environmental differences, shaped by distinct host cell types, are sensed by individual bacteria and influence their growth. This work builds on a method the laboratory recently developed that allows researchers to directly visualize how individual Mtb bacteria respond to their surroundings within intact granulomas.

By testing whether disrupting Mtb’s ability to respond to key environmental signals can reduce this variability, the researchers aim to identify vulnerabilities in Mtb-host interactions that could be targeted therapeutically. The concepts and approaches developed through this work may also advance the study of other important bacterial infections.

Learn more about the Tan Lab: https://medicine.tufts.edu/people/faculty/shumin-tan