From virology to immunology, Wu focuses on structure

At a 1987 scientific conference in Beijing, Hao Wu, then a medical student in Peking, heard the physicist and microbiologist Michael Rossmann deliver a talk on the crystal structure of human rhinovirus. “I was captivated by the potential of crystallography to solve large viral structures and answer complex biological questions,” Wu said.

Wu opted to leave medical school and the immunology lab she’d been working in. Instead, she earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry in Rossmann’s lab at Purdue University, where she worked on solving the structure of human parvovirus and cauliflower mosaic virus.

Hao Wu

Although she transitioned into structural virology, Wu never truly left immunology behind; she studied the structure of the glycoprotein CD4 during her postdoctoral work. When she established her own laboratory, she focused on structures of signaling proteins in the pathway for the tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily.

The shift from structural virology to structural immunology presented challenges, including the need to establish collaborations with biologists who were already engaged with others in the field. This transition coincided with a busy time in Wu’s personal life; she was a mother of two young children. Balancing her work in the lab with her responsibilities at home required careful time management.

“I had to categorize my tasks based on what I needed to do in the lab or not, get those tasks done and head home,” she said.

Wu now leads a structural and mechanistic immunology laboratory in the cellular and molecular medicine program at Boston Children’s Hospital and the biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology department at Harvard Medical School. 

Timothy Springer, a professor at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, nominated Wu for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s 2024 Bert and Natalie Vallee Award in Biomedical Science for her outstanding accomplishments in basic biomedical research.

“Her studies not only provided important biological insights but also illustrated a new way of signal transduction by oligomerization as well as a new approach to study these complexes by a multitude of combined methods,” Springer wrote.

Wu advises early-career scientists, “Identify your goals, focus, and pursue them relentlessly.”