Adeline (Lynn) Hajjar, DVM, PhD, is Director of the Gnotobiotics Facility in the Center for Microbiome and Human Health at the Lerner Research Institute. She is also Associate Staff in the Department of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences and Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine in the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.
Dr Hajjar was born in Beirut, Lebanon and initially came to the US in 1975 due to the civil war and moved here permanently during college. She earned her DVM from the University of Illinois, Urbana, and her PhD from the Department of Microbiology at the University of Washington, Seattle. She remained at the University of Washington for postdoctoral training in the Department of Immunology and established an independent laboratory in 2009 in the Department of Comparative Medicine. She also helped establish and then became the director of the gnotobiotics core at the University of Washington, before joining the Cleveland Clinic in 2018. Dr Hajjar has over 20 years of research experience concentrating in areas of Toll-like receptor biology and inflammatory responses as well as mouse models of infection, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, Yersinia pestis, and Bordetella pertussis, with a particular interest in overcoming mouse-human differences in innate immunity by creation of humanized mouse models. In addition to her service duties, she currently maintains a small research laboratory investigating the role of the gut microbiome in cystic fibrosis.
In her free time, Lynn loves to eat and can be found searching for that perfect poke bowl. She also enjoys bird-watching and going for walks with her dog and wife, and even one cat in a stroller.
Research Information
Research Interests
Humans are in constant contact with the collection of microorganisms that live in and on us called microbiota. These interactions are essential to our health although perturbations in the mix of microbiota or the products they produce can lead to disease. How this happens is complex and poorly understood for most diseases; however, the use of germfree mice, i.e. mice that are sterile and totally devoid of all microbial life, has aided in determining mechanisms of action. The Gnotobiotics Facility provides resources and support to perform studies where the role of distinct microbial members can be determined. In the Hajjar Lab, we study how microbiota alter immunity by using germfree mice and introducing different collections of microbiota to determine which ones alter immune responses. Currently, we are studying how the gene mutated in cystic fibrosis selects for different microbiota that then drive changes in barrier function and immune responses.