Message From the Chairs

DEPARTMENTS AND OFFICES

Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy

It is an exciting time for immunology research around the world. New therapeutics that work by drugging immune pathways are being invented at a phenomenal rate. By building the first Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we intend to appoint and support research faculty to fuel these new innovations by providing an environment for investigating how the immune system works in a disease-agnostic fashion. The immune system influences every other physiological system, from the brain to the heart. Our Department will serve as the administrative conduit that unites immunologists and immune engineers across many research institutes at Icahn Mount Sinai, particularly the Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute, the Icahn Genomics Institute, and the Tisch Cancer Institute.

We are proud of the vibrant and collegial community of immunologists that already exists within Icahn Mount Sinai. Our Department’s goal is to nurture our faculty’s ability to conduct innovative research with medical impact, while maintaining our spirit of inclusiveness and kindness that values everyone’s data and ideas.

Many features of the medical school’s research environment elevate fundamental immunology research. In our Department, we have access to large and diverse patient cohorts well suited to studies of human immunology. And we are based in a close-knit medical school campus that encourages collaboration among physicians and scientists. The Human Immune Monitoring Center and Microbiome Translational Center are leading the way in profiling the human immune system and microbiome. We are recruiting new faculty to broaden our expertise in immune engineering, from producing new functional antibodies to developing gene engineering approaches and RNA therapeutics. The Department will accelerate the progress of immunology research from initial patient immune profiling to mechanistic studies in preclinical models. These efforts will inform the design of new therapeutics, which we can test in the Early Phase Trials Unit of Mount Sinai’s Tisch Cancer Institute.

Our missions are threefold. A scientific and medical mission to identify the molecular drivers of immune imbalance behind human diseases. A technology mission to engineer new platforms to map, monitor, and drug immune cell and gene targets. A social mission to educate the next generation of immunologists. We will continue to develop the medical school’s Immunology Multidisciplinary Training Area by enhancing the immunology curriculum, and expanding our outreach initiatives to introduce immunology to high school students. By training young immunologists, we will ensure our holistic and collegial approach to biomedical research continues to elevate the field of fundamental immunology.

We invite you to explore our website and see the exciting discoveries and opportunities available here.

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD
Chair of the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy

Brian D. Brown, PhD
Vice-Chair of the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy