"The arrival of Dan Littman will bring one of the world's leading scientists to Sloan-Kettering Institute's immunology program, and we expect that he will play a key role in the future development of the Institute," said Sloan-Kettering Institute Director Thomas J. Kelly. "Dan has made many seminal contributions to our current understanding of how different classes of T lymphocytes develop and migrate." T lymphocytes, also known as T cells, play a major role in the body's immune response by recognizing substances that are foreign to the body and helping to eliminate them. Dr. Littman's research has focused on the molecular mechanisms involved in the differentiation of T cells, the signaling pathways involved in T cell activation, and the migration of T cells and related cells to lymphoid organs and sites of inflammation.
A second major area of interest in his laboratory has been in elucidating the mechanisms by which HIV circumvents detection by the immune system and destroys immune cells called T helper cells, which are key regulators of immune responses. His lab found that infection of T lymphocytes is enhanced if HIV is first internalized by dendritic cells into a specialized compartment. His lab is now studying the mechanism for how the virus enters dendritic cells and the role of these cells in mouse models.
Dr. Littman earned his MD degree and PhD in molecular biology from Washington University in St. Louis. He spent time at Columbia University and the University of California, San Francisco, before joining New York University in 1995. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
Dr. Houghton, in whose honor the chair was named, is an attending physician and incumbent of the Virginia and Daniel K. Ludwig Chair for Clinical Investigation. He is the former Chief of the Clinical Immunology Service and former Chair of Sloan-Kettering Institute's Immunology Program.
