Oral History Project: Laurie H. Glimcher, MD-Interview with Laurie H. Glimcher, M.D.

Video Transcription

Video Summary

Dr. Laurie Glimcher recounts her path from growing up in a physician-scientist family in Boston to becoming a leading immunologist and academic leader. Trained at Harvard (college, medical school, and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital), she fell in love with immunology early in medical school, especially questions of self/non-self recognition and autoimmune disease. Mentored by Harvey Cantor, she went to the NIH for postdoctoral work with Bill Paul, where she developed a risky but successful approach to generating mutant MHC class II cell lines to probe T-cell activation—work she continued while completing rheumatology training and launching an independent lab at a young age.<br /><br />At Harvard, she advanced through research, clinical work, and increasing administrative roles, emphasizing rigorous data, mentoring, and selective service commitments. Scientifically, her lab made major contributions to transcriptional control of immune differentiation, including discovery of c-Maf in Th2 cells and, most notably, T-bet as a master regulator of Th1/type 1 immunity, with broad implications across immune cells and disease models (autoimmunity, asthma, cancer, and microbiota-driven colitis). Another pivotal line of work came from deleting XBP1, revealing its essential role in plasma cell differentiation and leading her into ER stress/unfolded protein response biology, with later findings in pancreas, neurodegeneration, cancer, and lipid metabolism.<br /><br />A serendipitous knockout phenotype led her into skeletal biology, identifying Schnurri-3 as a promising anabolic target for osteoporosis therapies. As AAI President (2003–2004), she promoted women’s advancement and helped create the NIH “PICTAS” technical-assistance supplement for primary caregivers. She concludes with optimism about immunology’s future, urges thoughtful risk-taking in science, and encourages women not to forgo having children due to career fears.

Asset Caption

Laurie H. Glimcher is the president and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, chief executive officer of Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare, director of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and a trustee of Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Care. She is also the Richard and Susan Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Glimcher was president of The American Association of Immunologists from 2003 to 2004 and served on the AAI Council from 1998 to 2005. She was awarded the AAI Excellence in Mentoring Award in 2008, the AAI Meritorious Career Award in 2006, and the AAI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018, and elected a Distinguished Fellow of AAI in 2019.

Keywords

Laurie Glimcher

immunology

Harvard Medical School

Massachusetts General Hospital

NIH postdoctoral research

MHC class II mutants

T-cell activation

autoimmune disease

T-bet transcription factor

Th1/Th2 differentiation

XBP1

unfolded protein response

Schnurri-3 osteoporosis target