Harald von Boehmer

Career

The youngest of Hasso von Boehmer's three children, Harald obtained an M.D. from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (1968) and a Ph.D. from Melbourne University, Australia (1974). He was a member of the Basel Institute for Immunology in Switzerland (1973–1996), director of Unité INSERM 373 at the René Descartes University in Paris, France and is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University, Cambridge and Chief of the Laboratory for Lymphocyte Biology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He is also currently an adjunct professor at the University of Florida.

Harald von Boehmer has studied the role of T lymphocytes in the immune system. In particular he has addressed the contribution of the T cell receptor (TCR) to recognition by T cells of peptide-MHC complexes by transfer of TCR alpha and beta genes from one T cell clone to another. Questions concerned with the role of positive and negative selection of developing T cells by peptide-MHC complexes in the thymus in generating an effective and self-tolerant immune system were analyzed in TCR transgenic mice. The same experimental system served the purpose to study the impact of TCR-ligation on developing T cells by MHC class I and MHC class II ligands on the intrathymic generation of CD8 killer and CD4 helper cells, respectively. Further studies were concerned with the structure and function of the pre-T cell receptor and its role in controlling survival and differentiation of developing T cells that have succeeded in productive TCR beta rearrangement. Presently Harald von Boehmer studies the generation and function of regulatory T cells that have an essential role in preventing autoimmunity with the goal to exploit these cells in the prevention of and interference with unwanted immune reactions.

Harald von Boehmer was elected as a Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France (1997), was awarded the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine jointly with Nicole Le Douarin and Gottfried Schatz in Geneva (1990) and received an honorary Medical Degree from the University of Technology, Munich (2002).

Harald von Boehmer retired at the end of 2012 and is guest professor in the Institute for Immunology of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich since January 2013.

In February 2013 Harald von Boehmer, MD, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Department of Cancer Immunology & AIDS, Harvard Medical School (USA), did receive the Helmholtz International Fellow Award for having excelled in the field of Immunology.

Awards

Selected publications

Selected papers from