"Using Outliers to Unlock Autoimmunity"

The Sam H. Phillips, Jr. M.D. Lectureship in Endocrinology

Speaker:

Mark S. Anderson, M.D., Ph.D.
A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor of Metabolism and Endocrinology
Robert B. Friend and Michelle M. Friend Professor of Diabetes Research
Professor, UCSF Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
Director, UCSF Diabetes Center
University of California San Francisco

About Mark Anderson:

Dr. Anderson holds a doctorate in immunology from the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, where he also completed his medical degree. He then obtained internal medicine residency training at the University of Minnesota, followed by a fellowship in endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In his research, Dr. Anderson focuses on the genetic and molecular underpinnings of such autoimmune diseases as type 1 diabetes and Hashimoto's disease. His lab group has a particular interest in how T cells – white blood cells that mature in the thymus gland and play an important role in immune response – can provoke autoimmunity. Dr. Anderson's major scientific contributions involve unraveling the mechanisms by which a key transcription factor called Aire promotes immune tolerance. He continues to make significant contributions in this area of research and has even developed translational approaches to his findings that involve manipulating this key tolerance mechanism.

As a leader in the translation of immunology to human health, Dr. Anderson is also Director of Immune Tolerance Network (ITN), a collaborative network for clinical research funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, a co-founder of ImmunoX, a novel program to harness the immune system for human health at UCSF.

As a practicing Diabetologist, he serves in an advisory capacity for the translation of immunology to autoimmunity, including service as a mechanistic investigator/advisor to Trialnet, an NIH-sponsored multicenter clinical trial consortium whose focus is on preventing and reversing type 1 diabetes.

In 2020, Dr. Anderson was elected into the National Academy of Medicine, and received the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute in 2024.