Rachel L. Miller, MD, Professor of Medicine (Clinical Immunology), Environmental Medicine, and Immunology & Immunotherapy, Icahn School of Medicine, was appointed Chief of Clinical Immunology at the Mount Sinai Health System, and was privileged with assuming again the title of The Dr. David and Dorothy Merksamer Professorship of Medicine (Allergy and Immunology). She is an expert in asthma and allergies and serves as the Deputy Editor of The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, is appointed Mount Sinai Professor in Cancer Immunology

Charlotte Cunningham-Rundles, MD, PhD, David S Gottesman Professor of Immunology, served as Acting Chief of the Division. She led the Division while launching and serving as Director of the Immunodeficiency Clinic and continuing her pioneering work in immune deficiency. This clinical program has become a leading referral service to evaluate and treat infants, children, and adults with a variety of primary immune deficiency diseases. She initiated one of the first clinical trials in the United States of intravenous immune globulin for patients with primary immune deficiency and loss of antibody production.

The Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Food Allergy Institute was founded and has led food allergy research, including advances in epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and public education of food allergic problems and immunologic disorders. Hugh Sampson, MD, Founding Director of the Institute (now directed by Scott Sicherer, MD), was the first to show that food allergy was the basis for atopic dermatitis in children and has developed formulas for food allergic infants. 

Lloyd Mayer, MD, subsequently became a formative Division Chief after he was named Director of the Division of Clinical Immunology. Dr. Mayer became The David and Dorothy Merksamer Professor of Medicine (Allergy and Immunology), as well as Professor of Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and then Professor and Co-Director of the Division’s partner Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute (with Sergio Lira, MD, PhD). He also served as Chief of the of the Dr. Henry D. Janowitz Division of Gastroenterology from 2003 to 2010. Dr. Mayer was the first to show that T cells regulate immunoglobulin isotype switching in human B cells. His lab also showed that the epithelial lining cells of the intestines regulate mucosal immune response

Dr. Siegal became one of the first to recognize the AIDS epidemic and saw and reported on some of the first cases of this infection and the immunologic defects, starting in 1979. A fellowship program in Allergy Immunology was also initiated during these years. 

The Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology was founded in 1978.

Frederick P. Siegal, MD, devoted over 50 years of service to Mount Sinai and became Chief of the Division of Clinical Immunology in the mid-1970s.

The condition “eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis” (Churg–Strauss syndrome) was first described by Jacob Churg, MD, and Lotte Strauss, MD, at The Mount Sinai Hospital.

Kermit E. Osserman, MD, organized a myasthenia clinic. Dr. Osserman sensed the immunological implications of myasthenia long before it was appreciated and wrote the first text on the subject.

Harold A. Abramson, MD, joined Mount Sinai and later became the Allergist to the Hospital. With a major interest in asthma and pulmonary disease, Dr. Abramson was an early proponent of delivering aerosolized medication to the lungs and demonstrated the safety and efficacy of the technique.

New York Hospital’s Allergy Clinic, founded in 1918 by Robert A. Cooke, MD, moved to Roosevelt Hospital (now Mount Sinai West). It was the first clinic ever established for the diagnosis, treatment, and study of the various manifestations of allergies. It later became Roosevelt Hospital’s Institute of Allergy.