Miriam Merad, MD PhD, has made many discoveries that have transformed our understanding of how the myeloid compartment of the immune system contributes to health and disease. These insights cover the gamut of myeloid biology, from revealing the fundamentals of tissue macrophage ontogeny and their control of tissue homeostasis or inflammation, to classifying new types of dendritic cell that regulate tumor and anti-viral immunity.
At the heart of Dr. Merad’s research and clinical programs is the drive to reveal new human immunology and unite biomedical scientists and physicians in appreciating that shared immune mechanisms can drive what appear to be very different diseases, and how new immunotherapies should be designed to rescue these processes. Dr. Merad is Director of the Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute (PrIISM) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, where she founded the Human Immune Monitoring Center to identify such targetable shared immune drivers of disease, including many cytokines. For example, IL-4 has been identified as a signature in psoriasis and lung cancer, and clinical trials are underway for testing if the IL-4 blockade antibodies used to treat asthma are also beneficial for these other conditions. Dr. Merad holds a Chair in Cancer Immunology, is co-Director of the Cancer Immunology Program of the Tisch Cancer Institute at Sinai, and a recipient of the William Coley Award for cancer immunology. In 2020, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, in recognition of her contributions to the field of immunology. Dr. Merad is currently the President of the International Union of Immunological Societies.