Partner Institutions

Brigham and Women’s Hospital is a founding member of Mass General Brigham and a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. With nearly 1,000 inpatient beds, approximately 50,000 inpatient stays, and over 2.6 million outpatient encounters annually, clinicians across the Brigham provide compassionate, high-quality care in virtually every medical and surgical specialty to patients locally, regionally, nationally and around the world. An international leader in basic, clinical, and translational research, Brigham and Women’s Hospital has nearly 5,000 scientists, including physician-investigators, renowned biomedical researchers and faculty supported by nearly $750 million in funding.

The Brigham’s medical preeminence and service to the community dates to 1832, with the opening of the Boston Lying In, one of the nation’s first maternity hospitals designed to care for women unable to afford in-home medical care. Its merger with the Free Hospital for Women resulted in the Boston Hospital for Women in 1966. In 1980, the Boston Hospital for Women, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital officially merged to become Brigham and Women’s Hospital. With nearly 21,000 employees across the Brigham family – including the Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization and Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital – that rich history is the foundation for our commitment to providing superb care for some of the most complex cases, pursuing breakthroughs in biomedical research, training the next generation of health care providers, and serving the local and global community.

The Brigham has also long been an epicenter of both immunology research and the development and delivery of innovative treatments for immune-mediated diseases. We trace our leadership in the field, again, to our predecessor institution, the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, which opened in 1914 as the first and only hospital devoted solely to the treatment of the immune diseases of arthritic and rheumatic diseases. The hospital was led by Theodore B. Bayles, MD, an influential early force in the application of fundamental immunology to the understanding and treatment of arthritis. Major clinical innovations emerged from this work, including the use of cortisone to manage rheumatic arthritis, the establishment of separate occupational and physical therapy departments, the creation of specialized services for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and the professionalization of orthopedic nursing.

This legacy was extended by immunology pioneer K. Frank Austen, MD, first incumbent of Harvard’s Bayles professorship and physician-in-chief at the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital. Austen’s team elevated the hospital’s immunology research to international stature by working out the key mechanisms of allergy and inflammation. His major contributions to the field include unraveling the complement cascade, being one of the original discoverers of slow-reacting substance of anaphylaxis (SRS-A), discovering how leukotrienes drive inflammation and furthering the understanding of the molecular and cellular biology of mast cells.

Austen also bridged immunology research into the 21^st century, as the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital transitioned to become the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a center for research and care across a range of immune diseases.

The Brigham is also a cornerstone founder of Harvard’s graduate Program in Immunology, overseen by the Executive Committee on Immunology. This multi-institutional program emerged in 1974, with the recognition that Harvard’s world-leading concentration of outstanding basic, clinical, and translational immunology researchers included tremendous strength and leadership across Harvard’s teaching hospitals. This led to a new structure in the Harvard community for high-level education in the field. Brigham researchers and clinicians have long played a prominent role as Executive Committee members.

Michael B. Brenner, MD, director of cell and molecular immunology in the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Theodore B. Bayles Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, served on this Committee. Brenner’s discoveries of new cell types and pathways—including pathological T helper cells, as well as stromal cell differentiation and their relation to inflammation—have altered our understanding of autoimmune and immune-mediated conditions.​

Today, renowned immunologist Vijay Kuchroo, DVM, PhD, continues the Brigham’s legacy in the study of immunology—serving on the Committee alongside other hospital and university-based members and leading The Gene Lay Institute of Immunology and Inflammation of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.  Kuchroo’s laboratory discovered TIM-family genes, which are being exploited for Cancer Immunotherapy, and his laboratory also discovered highly pathogenic Th17 cells that induce autoimmunity.

Harvard Medical School, founded in 1782, has more than 12,000 faculty working in the 11 basic and social science departments in the Blavatnik Institute and at the 15 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes.

Research by HMS immunologists has shaped our understanding of the immune system and generated critical insights about its involvement in many organ functions and disease processes.

In the 1940s, Albert Coons, an HMS physician-scientist working at Massachusetts General Hospital, was the first to conceive of coupling antibodies with fluorescent molecules to tag and identify antigens on microbes and in tissues. At HMS, he invented the techniques of immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry, which have enabled scientists the world over to study how microbes interact with their hosts.

Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin became household names for developing polio vaccines, but their work was enabled by the enormous contributions of HMS immunologist John Enders and his colleagues Frederick Robbins and Thomas Weller, both Harvard Medical School graduates who worked at HMS-affiliated Children’s Hospital in Boston. They developed a technique that allowed researchers to grow the poliovirus in the laboratory, which was crucial for subsequent polio vaccine design. Enders, Robbins, and Weller received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

HMS immunologist Baruj Benacerraf established the genetic basis for the strength of immune reactions, linking immune responsiveness to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes that encode cell-surface proteins responsible for regulating immune reactions. For this work, Benacerraf shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Jean Dausset and George Snell.

Another pioneering Harvard immunologist, Jack Strominger, was the first to isolate MHC proteins, an advance that became the foundation for research into the immune system’s role in organ rejection and tolerance as well as for elucidating the role that these proteins play in autoimmunity.

Today, the ongoing work of immunologists at HMS and its affiliated institutions is pushing the boundaries of our understanding of the immune system and transforming the future of the discipline. In recent years, HMS researchers have made pivotal contributions to defining the immunology of cancer and to the field of cancer immunotherapy.

The Department of Immunology at HMS focuses on unraveling fundamental immunobiology and aims to harness these insights into actionable clinical therapies for a range of immune-mediated conditions, including cancer, autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders, and infectious diseases. The quest to catalyze basic insights generated in the lab into frontline treatments is made possible by the Harvard ecosystem — a constellation of basic, translational, and clinical researchers working in labs at HMS and at HMS-affiliated hospitals. This unique environment enables fruitful collaborations not only among researchers and displines but also across different modes of scientific inquiry.

Active areas of research include infection and immunity, cancer immunology, autoimmunity, neuroimmunology, inflammation biology, mucosal immunology, and translational immunology and how the microbiome, aging, diet, obesity, and other factors influence immune responses. HMS faculty are committed to training and mentoring the next generation of scholars, scientists, and physicians.

The Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) is a founding member of Mass General Brigham and is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.  Founded in 1811, it houses the world’s largest hospital-based research program, the Mass General Research Institute, with an annual research budget exceeding $1.2 billion and comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments.

From pioneering work by Walter Dodd, MD in building early X-ray generators for medical imaging, to the first demonstration of ether as a general anesthetic, the first successful replantation of a completely severed limb by a team of surgeons led by Ronald Malt, MD, and the invention of MRI and fMRI imaging technologies, Mass General has a rich history of medical breakthroughs, providing world-class patient care and training the next generation of international leaders in science and medicine.  Our internationally recognized faculty and trainees include Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine who received prizes for their work in cell biology. Jack Szostak, former faculty in the Department of Molecular Biology and the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, received this honor in 2009 for the discovery of the function of telomeres. In the field of immunology, Gerald Edelman received this honor in 1972 for the discovery of the structure of antibodies and Ralph Steinman won in 2011 for the discovery of dendritic cells and their role in adaptive immunity.

Mass General has a long-standing leading role in the development of treatments for immune and inflammatory diseases that have touched millions of lives.  Mass General immunologist Brian Seed, PhD, discovered a method for fusing proteins to a portion of the antibody molecule and used it to engineer a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor decoy for preventing TNF’s pro-inflammatory activity.  Sold under the brand name Enbrel, this TNF inhibitor can successfully treat autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis, and inflammatory bowel disease.  Robert Colvin, MD and Atul Bhan, MD, Mass General pathologists, were part of the team that developed a monoclonal antibody that blocks the integrin α₄β₇ and therefore has gut-selective anti-inflammatory activity.  This antibody called Vedolizumab, is used in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.

Research in immunology and inflammation at Mass General is interdisciplinary and multi-institutional.  Physicians and researchers in the Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases (CIID) build bridges across disciplines at Mass General—such as allergy, rheumatology, pulmonary, infectious disease, gastroenterology, and cardiology—to assess problems from different expert perspectives and generate innovative ideas.   Andrew Luster, MD, PhD, the director of the CIID, discovered one the first chemokines, a large family of secreted proteins that control immune cell trafficking and are targets for new therapies.  CIID investigator Allen Steere, MD, discovered Lyme Disease, and led studies that established the diagnosis and treatment of this disease and the effectiveness of a vaccine and has contributed immensely to our understanding of infection-induced autoimmunity.  Alexandra-Chloe Villani, PhD, leads the single cell genomics program in the CIID, and is co-leading the Human Immune Cell Atlas, an international effort to define all immune cell subsets and states in health and disease.  Robert Anthony, PhD, heads a laboratory in the CIID that has defined how glycosylation of antibodies regulates their function and has engineered immunosuppressive antibodies by altering their glycosylation.

The Center for Cancer Immunology at Mass General is dedicated to learning how to activate the immune system to target and destroy cancer within the body.  The center is directed by Nir Hacohen, PhD, a systems immunologist, who has defined immune cell hubs in tumors that regulate anti-tumor immune responses.  Marcela Maus, MD, PhD, director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program, designs and evaluates next generation genetically modified (CAR) T cells as immunotherapy in patients with cancer and recently led the first trial of CAR T-based treatment for glioblastoma.

Mass General infectious diseases specialist Bruce Walker, MD, is the founding director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard.  The mission of the Ragon, founded in 2009, is to harness the immune system to prevent and cure human disease. The Institute’s initial goal of making an effective global HIV vaccine is well underway and Ragon researchers are also making innovative discoveries in the development of universal influenza and SARS-Cov-2 vaccines.

The Center for Computational and Integrative Biology (CCIB), directed by Ramnik Xavier, MD, is a thematic center at Mass General comprised of faculty that apply interdisciplinary approaches and novel chemical, genomic, and computational tools to identify mediators of innate and adaptive immunity and host-microbe interactions, probe signaling pathways, and design therapeutic disease interventions. Bringing together investigators working on inflammatory bowel diseases, as well as other inflammatory diseases, Xavier directs the Center for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (CSIBD) that encompasses investigators at Mass General, the Broad Institute, and allied institutions pursuing research that has yielded insight into the pathogenesis of immune-mediated diseases.  Xavier is an immunologist and geneticist who has defined risk alleles for inflammatory bowel disease that are now being developed as new treatment targets, is vice director of The Gene Lay Institute of Immunology and Inflammation and directs the Immunology Program at the Broad.