Dr. Edelson is a physician scientist in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine. His research focuses broadly on gene regulation in immune cells, with a particular interest in T cells and macrophages. His lab had identified the transcription factor BHLHE40 as an important player in immune cell biology. Using a variety of engineered mouse models, he has shown this transcription factor to be essential for the pathogenicity of autoreactive CD4+ T cells in a mouse model of the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis. In murine models of infection spanning a variety of pathogen types, the Edelson lab showed BHLHE40 to play a role in T cells that help to control infection. In each of these cases, BHLHE40 was involved in the cell-intrinsic regulation of cytokine production. Other work in the lab showed an unexpected role for BHLHE40 in the proliferative program of specific tissue-resident macrophage populations, leading to an interest in macrophage proliferation in the lab more broadly. More recently, Dr. Edelson has worked closely with neurologists to begin to assess the immune cells present in cerebrospinal fluid at a single cell level across multiple neuro-immunologic diseases. Dr. Edelson also is a medical educator, leading the instruction of immunology for medical students at Washington University School of Medicine and being part of the creation of a new curriculum, with roles in preclinical course and clerkship design.