Draft:Benjamin tenOever

Benjamin tenOever is an American virologist who studies how cells respond to viral infection. He is the Jan T. Vilcek Professor of Molecular Pathogenesis and chair of the Department of Microbiology at New York University School of Medicine.

Growing up in rural Ontario, Canada, tenOever (pronounced maneuver with ‘T’), was an undergraduate at McGill University where he remained for his graduate studies. He earned a doctorate in Experimental Medicine in 2004 and then trained as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University from 2004 to 2007. He launched his own research program in August 2007 at Mount Sinai where he later held the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professorship of Medicine. In 2014, he received a Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair appointment which took him to the École Normale Supérieure and the Institut Pasteur in France. In 2021, tenOever moved his research program to the New York University School of Medicine where he is presently Chair of Microbiology and the Jan T. Vilcek Professor of Molecular Pathogenesis.

An early focus of tenOever’s research was the signaling that allows an infected cell to initiate an antiviral response. Upon starting his own independent program, his lab began to explore whether microRNAs (miRNAs), which help regulate gene expression, could be used to control viral replication. These efforts suggested miRNAs were not potent enough to contribute in the antiviral response but also discovered that their potential for silencing could be exploited to selectively silence viral transcripts. In addition to applications for vaccine development, tenOever’s group also demonstrated that this approach could be extended to address gain-of-function research, proposing miRNA-dependent restriction as an additional precaution for influenza research.

In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the tenOever’s lab investigated the immune response to SARS-CoV-2. James Somers’s reporting in The New Yorker followed the team’s work during the early months of the pandemic. In one of the earliest studies from this effort, the lab examined infected cells, animal models, and patient samples and reported a combination of limited interferon production and increased inflammatory signaling in addition to reporting on one of the first small animal models for long COVID. Sharon Begley’s account in STAT explained how the findings distinguished the signals that help cells resist infection from those that draw immune cells to infected tissue.

tenOever was selected as a Pew Biomedical Scholar, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and was finalist for the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science and for the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists.