Immuno-Oncology Pioneer Merad Headlines April DCI Seminar Series (4.6.22)

The April 2022 Duke Cancer Institute Seminar Series, to be held on Wednesday, April 6, via Zoom, will feature Miriam Merad, MD, PhD — endowed professor of Cancer Immunology and director of the Precision Immunology Institute (PrIISM) at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She will present “Defining the Actionable Genome.”

PrIISM integrates immunological research programs with synergistic expertise in biology, medicine, technology, physics, mathematics, and computational biology to enhance the field's understanding of human immunology with the ultimate goal of applying these discoveries to the development of therapies for the clinic.

Merad also leads the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center, a research center she founded that uses cutting-edge single-cell technology to understand the contribution of immune cells to major human diseases and treatment responses.

Her lab, the Merad Lab, is focused on dendritic cell and macrophage biology, her two main areas of specialization.

• Merad is known for her work on dendritic cells, a group of cells that control adaptive immunity. She identified a new subset of dendritic cells, which is now considered a key target of antiviral and antitumor immunity.
   
• She is also a leader in the field of macrophage biology. Merad identified the tissue-resident macrophage lineage and revealed its distinct role in organ physiology and pathophysiology. She established the contribution of this macrophage lineage to cancer progression and inflammatory diseases and is now working on the development of novel macrophage-targeted therapies for these conditions.

Merad is the President-elect of the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS) and an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI). In 2020, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her contributions to the field of immunology.

She is also one of two recipients of the Cancer Research Institute's 2018 Willam B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology. This award is given annually to one or more scientists "for seminal discoveries in the field of basic immunology and cancer immunology."

Merad has authored more than 200 primary papers and reviews in high-profile journals. Her work has been cited several thousand times. She receives generous funding from the National Institutes of Health for her research on innate immunity and its contribution to human disease and she belongs to several NIH consortia.

Merad's lecture begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 9 a.m. The April 2022 DCI Seminar Series is presented by the DCI Immuno-Oncology Research Program and is held in conjunction with Hematology Oncology Grand Rounds.

For more information and to access the Zoom link for this talk, email Joan Lofton, MBA, AGM