Andrey Shaw, M.D., has been named the Emil R. Unanue Professor of Immunobiology in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The announcement will be made by Larry Shapiro, M.D., executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, at a symposium in honor of Unanue held on April 27 at the School of Medicine.
“This is a well-earned recognition of Andrey Shaw’s status as a national leader in immunology who is especially prominent in the area of how T cells recognize invaders and contribute to the immune response,” Shapiro says. “The new professorship, created via an anonymous gift to the department, also honors the fundamentally important contributions of former department head Emil Unanue, both as a pioneering immunologist and as the head of the department for more than 21 years.”
Unanue, M.D., stepped down as department head last summer but continues to work there as the Paul and Ellen Lacy Professor of Pathology.
“I feel very honored to have this chair named in recognition of Emil because he’s meant so much to my career as a scientist,” says Shaw. “He has had and continues to have a huge influence on my work, and he really taught me how to be an immunobiologist. I feel that much of who I am as a scientist is directly attributable to Emil.”
As the first Unanue professor, Shaw also becomes director of the new Division of Immunobiology within the department. Immunology and immunobiology focus on understanding how the immune system recognizes and responds to invaders, and how those mechanisms can go awry in autoimmune disorders and immune deficiency. The term immunobiology recognizes the increasingly broad range of health concerns that scientists have started linking to the immune system, including growth and development.
Skip Virgin, M.D., Ph.D., the Edward Mallinckrodt Professor and head of the Department of Pathology and Immunology, called Shaw an ideal choice to lead the division.
“Andrey is a natural leader like Emil who has helped drive the development of immunobiology,” Virgin says. “He is well-suited to growing this tradition of leadership in the new division.”
Shaw describes the division, which has 15 faculty members, as an outgrowth of Unanue’s work to make the Department of Pathology and Immunology “a world leader” in immunobiology.
“Given the size and eminence of the group that Emil assembled over his two decades as head of the department, we wanted to solidify the role of immunobiology both within the department and within the University,” Shaw says.
Shaw came to the School of Medicine in 1991 as an assistant professor of pathology. At the time, he was interested in signaling and cell biology.
“I wasn’t really an immunologist when I came here,” Shaw says. “But Emil encouraged me to become one by, among other things, having me teach the immunology course to the first-year medical students. And he helped me focus on some of the important immunological questions of the day.”
T cells, a primary focus for the Shaw lab, are one of most important components of the body’s defensive immune systems. The cells are preprogrammed to recognize a specific chunk of a foreign invader when it is presented to them by another class of immune cell, the antigen-presenting cell. That recognition causes the T cell to set off immune alarms designed to mobilize the body’s defenses against the invader.
The recognition and signaling processes that occur during interactions between T cells and other immune cells are intricately complex, and Shaw’s lab uses both computer modeling and laboratory experiments to untangle how those processes work. He has pioneered the use of mathematical modeling as an approach to understand how multiple variables effect T cell recognition of material from foreign invaders. Better understanding could be important both for fighting disease and for preventing misdirected immune system attacks on the body’s own tissues.
Another branch of Shaw’s research is focused on podocytes, cells in a kidney structure called the glomerulus that filter the blood to make urine. In 1999, Shaw unexpectedly discovered that knocking out a gene he had discovered in his immune research caused kidney failure in mice. Further investigation showed the gene’s protein is required for the normal function of podocytes. During that same year, a Finnish group linked an inherited form of kidney failure to a gene expressed by podocyte cells.
“As a result of these two findings, it was realized that many of the diseases of the glomerulus — which are relatively common — may be due to problems with the podocyte,” he says. “This was a new idea at that time. Now our work on the podocyte is focused on trying to understand what it is doing and how its dysfunction leads to some of the most common causes of kidney failure.”
Shaw obtained his medical degree from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Prior to his arrival at Washington University, he did his residency and postdoctoral training in the Department of Pathology at Yale University.
Washington University School of Medicine’s full-time and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.