Alexander Rudensky (born August 21, 1956) [1] [2] is an immunologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center known for his research on regulatory T cells and the transcription factor Foxp3. [3]
Rudensky received his Candidate of Sciences degree in 1986 from the Gabrichevsky Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Moscow, and completed his postdoctoral work at the Yale School of Medicine. [4] He is now the Chair of the Immunology Program and Director of the Ludwig Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering, as well as a professor at the Rockefeller University, Cornell University, Gerstner School of Graduate Studies, and Weill-Cornell Medical School. [5]
In a 2003 paper, Rudensky and colleagues showed that Foxp3 programs regulatory T cell development. [3] His lab continues to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying regulatory T cell activity, and the role these cells play in autoimmunity, tumor immunity, and immunity to infections. [6]
The Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord. The Prize is awarded in partnership between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foundation in Lund. The Academy is responsible for selecting the Crafoord Laureates. The prize is awarded in four categories: astronomy and mathematics; geosciences; biosciences, with particular emphasis on ecology; and polyarthritis, the disease from which Holger severely suffered in his last years.
The regulatory T cells (Tregs or Treg cells), formerly known as suppressor T cells, are a subpopulation of T cells that modulate the immune system, maintain tolerance to self-antigens, and prevent autoimmune disease. Treg cells are immunosuppressive and generally suppress or downregulate induction and proliferation of effector T cells. Treg cells express the biomarkers CD4, FOXP3, and CD25 and are thought to be derived from the same lineage as naïve CD4+ cells. Because effector T cells also express CD4 and CD25, Treg cells are very difficult to effectively discern from effector CD4+, making them difficult to study. Research has found that the cytokine transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) is essential for Treg cells to differentiate from naïve CD4+ cells and is important in maintaining Treg cell homeostasis.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is a cancer treatment and research institution in Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital. MSKCC is one of 72 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers. It had already been renamed and relocated, to its present site, when the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research was founded in 1945, and built adjacent to the hospital. The two medical entities formally coordinated their operations in 1960, and formally merged as a single entity in 1980. Its main campus is located at 1275 York Avenue between 67th and 68th Streets in Manhattan.
FOXP3, also known as scurfin, is a protein involved in immune system responses. A member of the FOX protein family, FOXP3 appears to function as a master regulator of the regulatory pathway in the development and function of regulatory T cells. Regulatory T cells generally turn the immune response down. In cancer, an excess of regulatory T cell activity can prevent the immune system from destroying cancer cells. In autoimmune disease, a deficiency of regulatory T cell activity can allow other autoimmune cells to attack the body's own tissues.
Immunodysregulation polyendocrinopathy enteropathy X-linked syndrome is a rare autoimmune disease. It is one of the autoimmune polyendocrine syndromes. Most often, IPEX presents with autoimmune enteropathy, dermatitis (eczema), and autoimmune endocrinopathy, but other presentations exist.
Charles Alderson Janeway, Jr. (1943–2003) was a noted immunologist who helped create the modern field of innate immunity. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he held a faculty position at Yale University's Medical School and was an Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
Zinc finger protein Helios is a protein that in humans is encoded by the IKZF2 gene. This protein is a member of Ikaros family of transcription factors.
Avery August is a Belizean-born American scientist who is currently a professor of immunology and vice provost at Cornell University.
Lloyd John Old was one of the founders and standard-bearers of the field of cancer immunology. When Old began his career in 1958, tumor immunology was in its infancy. Today, cancer immunotherapies are emerging as a significant advance in cancer therapy.
T helper 3 cells (Th3) are a subset of T lymphocytes with immunoregulary and immunosuppressive functions, that can be induced by administration of foreign oral antigen. Th3 cells act mainly through the secretion of anti-inflammatory cytokine transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β). Th3 have been described both in mice and human as CD4+FOXP3− regulatory T cells. Th3 cells were first described in research focusing on oral tolerance in the experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE) mouse model and later described as CD4+CD25−FOXP3−LAP+ cells, that can be induced in the gut by oral antigen through T cell receptor (TCR) signalling.
James Patrick Allison is an American immunologist and Nobel laureate who holds the position of professor and chair of immunology and executive director of immunotherapy platform at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.
Craig B. Thompson is an American cell biologist and a former president of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Dana Pe'er, Chair and Professor in Computational and Systems Biology Program at Sloan Kettering Institute is a researcher in computational systems biology. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator since 2021, she was previously a professor at Columbia Department of Biological Sciences. Pe'er's research focuses on understanding the organization, function and evolution of molecular networks, particularly how genetic variations alter the regulatory network and how these genetic variations can cause cancer.
Marcel R.M. van den Brink is a Dutch oncologist and researcher known for his research in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for cancer patients.
Jeffrey A. Bluestone is the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Metabolism and Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, and was, for a number of years, an earlier executive vice chancellor and provost of that university. He began the UCSF affiliation in 2000, after earlier extended positions at the NCI-NIH, and at The University of Chicago. Bluestone earned his undergraduate and masters degrees in microbiology from Rutgers State University, and his doctoral degree in immunology from Cornell Graduate School of Medical Science. His current research is focused on understanding T cell activation and immune tolerance in autoimmunity and organ transplantation. In April 2016, he co-founded and served as the president and CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy,. In 2019, he co-founded and is Chief Executive Officer and President of Sonoma Biotherapeutics.
Alfred Singer is an American immunologist who works at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he is the Chief of the Experimental Immunology Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center for Cancer Research. He is best known for his work regarding lymphocyte development, particularly the differentiation of immature CD4+8+ thymocytes into mature T cells. Singer's work is foundational in the understanding of T cells and MHC-restricted antigen recognition.
Ethan Menahem Shevach is an immunologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland.
Frederick J. "Fred" Ramsdell is an American immunologist. Ramsdell graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in biology and from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1987 with a Ph.D. in immunology. As a postdoc he worked at the National Institutes of Health and subsequently in biotech companies in the Seattle area. He has served as a senior executive at several biotech companies Darwin Molecular/Celltech, ZymoGenetics, Novo Nordisk, and aTyr Pharma. Since the beginning of 2016, he has been Research Director at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco.
Miram Merad is a French-Algerian professor in Cancer immunology and the Director of the Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute (PrIISM) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) in New York, NY. She is the corecipient of the 2018 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Immunology and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.
Michel Sadelain is an genetic engineer and cell therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, where he holds the Steve and Barbara Friedman Chair. He is the founding director of the Center for Cell Engineering and the head of the Gene Transfer and Gene Expression Laboratory. He is a member of the department of medicine at Memorial Hospital and of the immunology program at the Sloan Kettering Institute. He is best known for his major contributions to T cell engineering and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy, an immunotherapy based on the genetic engineering of a patient's own T cells to treat cancer.