Research Staff

James G. Fox, DVM, MS, DACLAM, is a Professor and Founding Director of the Division of Comparative Medicine and a Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine.

Professor Fox is the author of over 625 articles, 80 chapters, 3 patents and has edited and authored 15 texts in the field of in vivo model development and comparative medicine. He has served on the editorial board of several journals and is a past member of the NIH/NCRR Scientific Advisory Council. He has received numerous scientific awards including the AVMA’s Charles River Prize in Comparative Medicine, the AALAS Nathan Brewer Scientific Achievement Award, the AVMA Excellence in Research Award, the ACLAM Award for Scientific Achievement, the Pravin Bhatt award for research excellence and the AALAS Griffin Award.

He has been studying infectious diseases of the gastrointestinal tract for the past 40 years and has focused on the pathogenesis of Campylobacter spp. and Helicobacter spp. infection in humans and animals. His laboratory developed the ferret as a model for both campylobacter and helicobacter associated disease as well as the first rodent model to study helicobacter associated gastric disease including gastric cancer.

Dr. Fox is considered an international authority on the epidemiology and pathogenesis of enterohepatic helicobacters in humans and animals. He is largely responsible for identifying, naming, and describing many of the diseases attributed to various Helicobacter species; most notably their association with hepatitis, liver tumors, inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer in mice. His laboratory most recently has described the pivotal role that Helicobacter spp. play in the development of the gallstones in mice fed a lithogenic diet; thus linking this finding to his earlier description of Helicobacter spp. associated chronic cholecystitis and gallstones in Chilean women, a population at high risk of developing gallbladder cancer. He also has had a long-standing interest in zoonotic diseases as well as biosafety issues associated with in vivo models.

His past and current research has been funded by NIH and NCI, as well as by private industrial sources, for the past 40 years. He has been the principal investigator of an NIH postdoctoral training grant for veterinarians for the past 29 years. He consults nationally and internationally with government, academia and industry. In 2004 Professor Fox was elected to the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Diplomate and a past president of the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine
• Past president of the Massachusetts Society of Medical Research
• Past chairman of AAALAC Council
• Past chairman of the NCCR/NIH Comparative Medicine Study Section
• Elected fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America and the American Gastroenterology Association
• Past president of the Massachusetts Society of Medical Research
• Past chairman of AAALAC Council
• Past chairman of the NCCR/NIH Comparative Medicine Study Section
• Elected fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America and the American Gastroenterology Association

Yan Feng, MD, Research Scientist. Her research interests focus on pathogenesis of Helicobacter spp., including investigating pathogenic potentiality of virulence factors from gastric and enterohepatic Helicobacter spp. and pathogen -host interactions in animal models. She is also actively involved in development of animal models to test efficacy of acupuncture in neurological and immunological disease states.

Zhongming Ge, PhD, is a Molecular Biologist in the Division. His research interests include identification of virulence factors from gastric and enterohepatic helicobacters, the pathogen-host interactions and molecular mechanisms of liver and intestinal tumorigenesis in mouse models. He is also actively involved in collaborative research on several NIH-funded projects as well as the training and supervision of undergraduates and post-doctoral fellows.

Zeli Shen, MD, Research Scientist, studies helicobacter pathogenesis, characterizing virulence genes responsible for pathogenic potential in Helicobacter spp., and the epidemiology of helicobacter infections using molecular techniques. Her research focus is the isolation and characterization of new Helicobacter species and their phylogenetic analysis. She also employs the use of Helicobacter spp C57BL IL-10-/- mice as an animal model to investigate the mechanisms of helicobacter- induced inflammatory bowel disease.