Miriam Merad, MD, PhD
The Mount Sinai Health System has announced a transformative multimillion-dollar gift from Marc Lipschultz, who serves on Mount Sinai’s Boards of Trustees, and his wife, Jennifer, to the Precision Immunology Institute (PrIISM) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
PrIISM has undertaken an innovative and ambitious research agenda aimed at understanding the immune system’s universal role in human health, with the goal of combatting and preventing the world’s most devastating diseases. Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz’s generous support will strengthen PrIISM’s core research programs and the institute will be renamed the Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute in recognition of their investment.
Nearly every disease has an immune component, making PrIISM’s work particularly important. PrIISM is led by Director Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, a renowned physician-scientist and global leader in immunology, who also serves as Director of the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center and Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Medical Oncology).
“We are so thankful to Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz for their visionary support of PrIISM,” says Dr. Merad. “Their gift will allow us to expand our research and drive breakthroughs in immunology that will help us better understand and target the underlying foundations of major human disease.”
Under Dr. Merad’s leadership, PrIISM is already making pivotal advances in precision medicine and developing novel technologies to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of a broad spectrum of diseases, including cancer, neurodegeneration, atherosclerosis, and aging.
Brian Brown, PhD, Associate Director of PrIISM, leads the development of new cell and gene engineering approaches to understand and manipulate the immune system.
“The Lipschultz’s generous investment is extremely timely and will help us harness the extraordinary advances in our understanding of the human immune system to develop novel targets of diseases,” says Dr. Brown.
“Jennifer and I are proud to support the revolutionary immunology research at PrIISM,” says Mr. Lipschultz. “We are excited to see how this meaningful work will transform the future of medicine and make a true difference in the lives of patients at Mount Sinai and beyond.”