Nischay Mishra, Ph.D.
Columbia University
Nischay Mishra, Ph.D., is an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. Mishra is a virologist with 20 years of experience in emerging and zoonotic viral infections, high-throughput sequencing, serology, pathogen discovery and pandemic response. Mishra also studies the role of microbial infections in chronic diseases, like ME/CFS, Long-COVID, Alzheimer’s disease and unexplained neurological infections. His work includes 2 FDA-EUA diagnostic devices for SARS-CoV-2 and Zika viruses and contributions to the development of VirCapSeq-VERT and BacCapSeq for detecting viruses and bacteria.
Mishra discovered Rickettsia and several viruses as the causative agents of unexplained acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) in children in India. He also identified and characterized Tilapia lake virus, a threat to global food security. Mishra discovered New Jersey polyomavirus as the cause of blindness and myositis in a woman exposed to Hurricane Sandy floodwaters, reported the pathogenicity of human polyomavirus-9 in solid-organ transplant recipients and studied the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 in children and immunocompromised patients. Mishra also investigated the origin and evolution of MERS in Saudi Arabia.
Mishra developed high-throughput serology platforms for detecting infection footprints when methods for direct detection of microbial nucleic acids and proteins are no longer applicable. Examples include, determining enterovirus-D68 in pediatric acute flaccid myelitis cases, Zika virus in microcephaly, antibodies against microbial agents in pediatric AES cases and contributions to tick-borne disease serodiagnosis. Mishra developed multiplex serological assays for several emerging viral diseases that can detect and quantify antibodies to each viral protein distinctly, enabling accurate serodiagnosis and identifying targets for therapeutic interventions.