Meet our
Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Blumberg received his B.S. degree in Biological Sciences from Carnegie-Mellon University, his M.D. degree from Jefferson Medical College of the Thomas Jefferson University and training in internal medicine (The New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center), infectious diseases (Massachusetts General Hospital), gastroenterology (Brigham and Women’s Hospital) and immunology (Dana Farber Cancer Institute). He is currently Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and past-Chief of Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Endoscopy at BWH.

Dr. Blumberg is also co-Director of the Harvard Digestive Diseases Center and has directed a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded laboratory since 1989. Among his wide-ranging, basic and applied discoveries in immunology and mucosal immunology, he was first to establish neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn) function in adult life and link FcRn to innate and adaptive immune activities. These insights led directly to new therapeutic strategies including creation of a novel class of long-acting therapeutic proteins, 'monomeric' FVIII-Fc and FIX-Fc fusion proteins, which are now globally approved for use in hemophilia A and B, and inhibitors of IgG-FcRn interactions for autoimmunity treatment that are currently in clinical testing. He has a long-term program focused on understanding CD1 function in mucosal immunity and the role played in microbial sensing, as well as defining the now widely accepted principle that a “window of opportunity” exists in early life that defines immune development in mucosal tissues and later life risk for mucosal inflammations such as inflammatory bowel disease. Moreover, he discovered a new risk pathway for inflammatory bowel disease involving endoplasmic reticulum stress in the intestinal epithelium as a site for inflammation initiation and among the first to define CEACAM1 as a negative regulator of T cells propelling it into clinical focus as a potential target for cancer immunotherapy.