Todd M. Allen

Todd Mackenzie Allen (born 1970) is a Canadian-born immunologist and virologist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University.

He is a specialist in HIV vaccine design and the sequence evolution and diversity of HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV).

More recently, his work is focused on developing novel immunotherapeutic approaches towards a functional cure of HIV, including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell immunotherapy and gene editing approaches capable of protecting against HIV infection.

Allen, the son of American parents, was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

He received his bachelor of science (BSc) in Biochemistry at the University of Waterloo before completing his PhD degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison studying T cell responses in the SIV infected macaque model of HIV infection.

In 2001, he moved to Boston to join the Partners AIDS Research Center (now the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard).

He is a faculty member of the Harvard Virology PhD program and in 2013 was awarded the Massachusetts General Hospital Research Scholars Award, providing philanthropic support for his research program.

He has published over 180 peer-reviewed papers on HIV and HCV.

His recent work uses humanized mouse models to accelerate development and testing of novel immunotherapies for HIV, including most recently the design of a novel Dual CAR T cell capable of controlling HIV

In 2014, he was promoted to Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

His laboratory at the Ragon Institute is focused on identifying protective immunity to HIV and Hepatitis C virus (HCV).