David Howard Sachs | |
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Born | New York, NY, USA | January 10, 1942
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Harvard Medical School Harvard College University of Paris |
Known for | Discovery of MHC class II First clinical protocol for the induction of transplantation tolerance |
Awards | Thomas Starzl Prize (2012) Medawar Prize (2014) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Transplantation Xenotransplantation |
Institutions | Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard Medical School Columbia University Medical Center |
David Howard Sachs (born January 10, 1942) is an American immunologist. He is best known for his discovery of MHC class II and for his seminal studies in the fields of transplant immune tolerance and xenotransplantation.
David Sachs graduated summa cum laude in organic chemistry from Harvard College in 1963, and pursued a master's degree equivalent at the University of Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1964. He then matriculated to Harvard Medical School, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1968. [1]
As a medical student, Sachs developed an interest in transplantation and joined the laboratory of Drs. Paul Russell and Henry Winn at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he remained as a surgical resident until 1970. From 1970 to 1972 Sachs fulfilled his military service working in Christian Anfinsen's laboratory at the National Institutes of Health. He remained in Bethesda and joined the National Cancer Institute, where his research led to the discovery of class II MHC in 1973. He was then appointed director of the Transplantation Biology Section of the Immunology Branch at NCI in 1974, and Chief of the Immunology Branch in 1982. [1]
In 1991 Sachs returned to Boston, where he was appointed Professor of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. At MGH Sachs further developed his research in the field of transplantation tolerance. In the 1980s Sachs had shown that mixed-chimerism can lead to transplant tolerance in small animal models; these findings were then confirmed in a large animal model during Sachs' tenure at Harvard. Based on these observations, Sachs and his colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital developed the first clinical protocol for the induction of organ transplantation tolerance in the early 2000s. [2]
Sir Peter Brian Medawar was a Brazilian-British biologist and writer, whose works on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance have been fundamental to the medical practice of tissue and organ transplants. For his scientific works, he is regarded as the "father of transplantation". He is remembered for his wit both in person and in popular writings. Richard Dawkins referred to him as "the wittiest of all scientific writers"; Stephen Jay Gould as "the cleverest man I have ever known".
Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick on December 23, 1954.
George Davis Snell NAS was an American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist.
Baruj Benacerraf was a Venezuelan-American immunologist, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the "discovery of the major histocompatibility complex genes which encode cell surface protein molecules important for the immune system's distinction between self and non-self." His colleagues and shared recipients were Jean Dausset and George Davis Snell.
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.
Ralph Marvin Steinman was a Canadian physician and medical researcher at Rockefeller University, who in 1973 discovered and named dendritic cells while working as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Zanvil A. Cohn, also at Rockefeller University. Steinman was one of the recipients of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Harald von Boehmer was a German-Swiss immunologist best known for his work on T cells.
Robert Alan Good NAM, NAS, AAAS was an American physician who performed the first successful human bone marrow transplant between persons who were not identical twins. He is regarded as a founder of modern immunology.
Ronald D. Guttmann MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1936 and received his post secondary school education at the University of Minnesota, receiving a B.A. Magna Cum Laude in 1958, and a B.S. and M.D. degree in 1961. He did his Medical Internship at the University of California San Francisco, military service in the USNR at the Tissue Bank, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Medical Residency on the II & IV (Harvard) Medical Service at Boston City Hospital, and a Research & Clinical Fellowship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital(now Brigham & Women's Hospital) and Harvard Medical School. In 1969, he was appointed associate in medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and permanently moved to Montreal, Canada in 1970 to become director of the transplantation service at the Royal Victoria Hospital and McGill University Clinic and associate professor of medicine, McGill University Faculty of Medicine. During his academic career he directed an active basic and clinical research laboratory program focused on transplantation immunobiology, immunogenetics, immunosuppression, and long term-complications of transplant patients. He also developed an interest in social and ethical issues of transplantation, organ shortage, and human rights abuses.
Jack Leonard Strominger is the Higgins Professor of Biochemistry at Harvard University, specializing in the structure and function of human histocompatibility proteins and their role in disease. He won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1995.
Short Course Immune Induction Therapy or SCIIT, is a therapeutic strategy employing rapid, specific, short term-modulation of the immune system using a therapeutic agent to induce T-cell non-responsiveness, also known as operational tolerance. As an alternative strategy to immunosuppression and antigen-specific tolerance inducing therapies, the primary goal of SCIIT is to re-establish or induce peripheral immune tolerance in the context of autoimmune disease and transplant rejection through the use of biological agents. In recent years, SCIIT has received increasing attention in clinical and research settings as an alternative to immunosuppressive drugs currently used in the clinic, drugs which put the patients at risk of developing infection, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
Laurie Hollis Glimcher is an American physician-scientist who was appointed president and CEO of Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in October 2016. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
Andrew D. Luster is the Persis, Cyrus and Marlow B. Harrison Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is Director of its Research Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases, and a member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center's Cancer Immunology program.
Reza Dana is the Claes H. Dohlman Professor of Ophthalmology, senior scientist and W. Clement Stone Clinical Research Scholar at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, and director of the Harvard-Vision Clinical Scientist Development Program.
Elizabeth Simpson OBE FRS FMedSci is a British biologist. She is the Emeritus Professor of Transplantation Biology at Imperial College London. Simpson is particularly known for her elucidation of the nature of male-associated minor transplantation antigens, and their roles in the generation of immunological tolerance, graft versus host disease, and transplant rejection.
Alessio Fasano is an Italian-born medical doctor, pediatric gastroenterologist and researcher. He currently holds many roles, including professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and professor of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, both in Boston. He serves as director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) and co-director of the Harvard Medical School Celiac Research Program. In addition, he is director of the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center at MGHfC, where he oversees a research program with approximately 50 scientists and staff researching a variety of acute and chronic inflammatory diseases, including cystic fibrosis, celiac disease, enteric infections and necrotizing enterocolitis. A common theme of these programs is the study of the emerging role of the gut microbiome in health and disease. Fasano is also the scientific director of the European Biomedical Research Institute of Salerno (EBRIS) in Italy. Along with these leadership positions, he is a practicing outpatient clinician in pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition and the division chief.
Guillermo J. Tearney is a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School, a physicist in the department of dermatology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a pathologist in the department of pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and runs a research laboratory at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston Massachusetts. Tearney received his BA in applied mathematics, graduating cum laude (1988), his MD graduating magna cum laude (1998) from Harvard Medical School, and received his PhD in electrical engineering (1997) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a well-known name in the field of biomedical optics, gastroenterology, and interventional cardiology for his prominent role on the development of endoscopic optical coherence tomography, in particular intracoronary optical coherence tomography, its translation to the clinic, and commercialization. He is recognized as one of the inventors of Intracoronary optical coherence tomography. He is also recognized as co-inventor of optical coherence tomography for endoscopic imaging and diagnosis of esophagus disorders, a clinical technology currently commercialized by NinePoint Medical.
Daniel David Federman, was an American endocrinologist and the Carl W. Walter Distinguished Professor of Medicine and the dean for medical education at Harvard Medical School. He helped change medical education at through its New Pathway curriculum around the early 1990s, and his work helped create the field of genetic endocrinology. Federman also worked for over thirty years at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area.
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Hugh Auchincloss, Jr. is an American immunologist and physician serving as the acting director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 2023. He previously served as the principal deputy director between 2006 and 2022. He was previously a transplant surgeon and professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, and researched at Massachusetts General Hospital for 17 years.