Professor Mike Dustin
BA Boston, PhD Harvard
Professorial Fellow
I have a B.A. in Biology from Boston University and a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard University. My undergraduate research focused on glucose transport in erythrocytes with Scott Peterson and my PhD on cell-cell adhesion in the immune system with Timothy A. Springer. I did post-doctoral training in the area of lysosome biogenesis with Stuart Kornfeld at Washington University. I started my independent career in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine. There, I led a collaborative team on the initial characterization of the immunological synapse. I was tenured at Washington University. I moved to NYU School of Medicine in 2001 and became a Professor in 2006. At NYU SOM we utilized intravital microscopy to further define the role of immunological synapses and guidance mechanisms in the immune system in vivo. We next defined a novel compartment in the immunological synapse based on release of T cell receptor enriched micro vesicles into the centre of the immunological synapse. Further investigation of the immunological synapse of cytotoxic T cells at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology of the University of Oxford revealed deposition of cytotoxic core-shell nanoparticles that can kill targets autonomously. Both the microvesicles and natural polymer nanoparticles constitute new signalling modes employed by immune cells for complex effector functions such as T cell help for antibody production and cell-mediated killing of cancerous and infected targets.
I led my own research group in the Department of Pathology at Washington University School of Medicine under Steve Teitelbaum and Emil Unanue from 1993 to 2000. While at Washington University, I led a collaborative effort that discovered key requirements for the T cell immunological synapse, working with Andrey Shaw, Paul Allen, Mark Davis (Stanford), and Emil Unanue. In 2001, I moved my laboratory to the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, where I collaborated on new intravital microscopy projects with Wenbiao Gan, Dan Littman, Juan Lafaille, Michel Nussensweig, Dorian McGavern, Sandra Demaria, and others.
Continuing my work on the immunological synapse, I contributed to a fundamental description of the supramolecular assemblies that form the mature immunological synapse and explored specialised functions of the synapse in cytotoxic T cells and regulatory T cells. This work includes the recent observation that small vesicles enriched in T cell receptor, known as synaptic ectosomes, are directly budded into the immunological synapse, transferring T cell receptor and other cargo to the antigen-presenting cell. I served as Director of the NIH-funded Nanomedicine Center for Mechanobiology from 2009 to 2014. To further advance studies of the immunological synapse and its translation to treatments for human disease, I moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford in 2013, supported by a Principal Research Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust.