ASCI / Emerging-Generation Awards, 2022

As a physician-scientist, David Zemmour, MD, PhD, is passionate about improving medicine and understanding diseases through Immunology and Systems Biology approaches. He completed his medical education in Paris, France, at the Pierre and Marie Curie Medical school (now Sorbonne University Medical School). He then moved to Boston to pursue a PhD in Immunology at Harvard University. With Drs. Benoist and Mathis, David studied regulatory T cells, a subset of CD4 helper T cells, and their emerging role beyond controlling autoimmunity in regulating tissue homeostasis. His research leveraged novel technologies such as single-cell genomics to understand the transcriptional regulation underlying Treg functions in tissues, at the basis of Treg molecular engineering methods to promote homeostasis and prevent diseases (such as wound healing, colitis, diabetes). After his PhD, his curiosity about disease mechanisms and technology drew him to Pathology. He is currently completing a residency in Clinical Pathology and a Fellowship in Hematopathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and continuing his work on Tregs. He focuses on a rare primary immunodeficiency, IPEX, caused by mutations in FOXP3 that alter Tregs resulting in lethal systemic autoimmunity. Using single-cell genomics, he dissected the molecular mechanism of the disease, i.e., the transcriptional effect of FoxP3 mutations in Tregs, and proposed a two-step pathogenesis model with therapeutic implications. As a pathologist and immunologist, his vision is to leverage Systems Immunology approaches to analyze Tregs directly in human samples during normal and diseased conditions, opening new avenues to design the next generation of Treg diagnostics and therapeutics.