The Columbia Immunology Center and Program have evolved from the rich history of immunology at Columbia University.  The goal of this Center is to promote collaborative research in fundamental aspects of Immunology, including regulation of the immune response, autoimmunity, and inflammation. This multidisciplinary program draws on the expertise of faculty in the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology , Biological Sciences , Medicine , Microbiology , Pediatrics , Physiology and Cellular Biophysics , Pathology , and Surgery .

This NIH funded program, which provides salary support, is open to qualified students who enroll in the graduate programs at Columbia University and to Postdoctoral Fellows in participating laboratories.

History of Immunology at Columbia University

Although the Training Program in Immunology was first established in 1996, it reflects a long and distinguished history of leadership in immunology at Columbia University. Over a half century ago, Michael Heidelberger’s work established the discipline of quantitative immunochemistry. His student, Elvin Kabat identified gamma globulins as the proteins responsible for antibody activity. Kabat went on to make many additional notable contributions, including the characterization of antibody hypervariable domains. Elliot Ossermen was the first to show antigenic specificity of a myeloma immunoglobulin and that light chains are the principle component of amyloid deposits in this disease. Kabat and Osserman’s extensive collection of immunoglobulins provided the material used by Henry Kunkel and his colleagues to identify immunolgobulin allotypes and by Gerald Edelman to determine the structure of IgG. The availability of patient specimens also led to other important discoveries. Charles Ragan determined that rheumatoid factor consisted of a complex of IgM and IgG. Vincent Freda and John Gorman discovered that treatment of Rh negative women with anti-Rh IgG blocked Rh sensitization and prevented erythroblastosis fetalis. Benvenuto Pernis, now Emeritus but still active, was the first to demonstrate that B-cells express IgG’s on their surfaces. While at Columbia, Fred Alt made important contributions in elucidating the mechanisms of V-D-J recombination and Sherrie Morrison developed the first humanized monoclonal antibodies.

As in the past, Columbia’s strength in immunology is manifest by the outstanding quality of its current faculty, students and fellows. Together, they are responsible for many important advances in fundamental and applied immunology over the last two decades. Richard Axel and Leonard Chess characterized and cloned the T-cell co-receptors CD4 and CD8, and together with Daniel Littman, then a postdoctoral fellow, they showed that CD4 is receptor for HIV on T-cells. Wayne Hendrickson has determined the structures of CD4 and CD8, as well as MHC class II and the accessory molecule H2-M. His recent structural analysis of the HIV-gp120 : CD4 complex has provided important insight into the mechanism of HIV entry. Leonard Chess and his associates have also identified CD40 ligand on activated T-cells and showed that it is essential for T-cells to stimulate B-cells to switch from IgM to IgG synthesis, and for T-cells to cooperate with macrophages. Riccardo Dalla-Favera has shown that Bcl-6 is essential for germinal center formation and characterized its involvement in follicular lymphomas. Kathryn Calame has identified Blimp-1 as a master regulator of the terminal differentiation of B-cells. Christian Schindler cloned and characterized the first STAT proteins. Paul Rothman discovered that interferon gamma receptors must be down-regulated for differentiation to Th2 cells to occur. Steven Greenberg showed that tyrosine kinases play an essential role in Fc receptor-mediated phagocytosis, and that syk regulates Fc receptor-stimulated actin assembly. Samuel Silverstein and colleagues’ demonstration that chemoattractant-stimulated neutrophils signal endothelial cells to open their intercellular junctions has initiated a significant new area of research in phagocyte biology. Columbia continues to build on this rich history through ongoing recruitment of outstanding junior (e.g., Konstantina Alexandropoulos, Mitchell Cairo, Raphael Clynes, Alessandra Pernis, Yongrui Zou), and senior faculty (e.g., Richard Baer).

Current Immunology at Columbia

The research interests of the Immunology Training Faculty span areas from extremely basic studies, such as x-ray structural determinations of immune molecules, thru the sophisticated use of genetically altered mice to study the molecular and physiological roles of transcriptional regulators, signaling molecules and chemokine receptors, to clinically oriented translational studies on development of tumor vaccines and the use of immunomodulatory drugs to treat cancer. This breadth of the Training Faculty ensures that our trainees have available to them scientific excellence spanning the full range of Immunology, from basic science to translational research.