Description of the Discipline

Since 1975, the Medical Center has offered a Program through UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences leading to a Ph.D. in Immunology. This course of study is interdisciplinary, with a faculty composed of members from the Medical School’s Departments of Biochemistry, Dermatology, Immunology, Internal Medicine, Microbiology, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Pathology, and Surgery.

A distinguishing characteristic of this Graduate Program is its multidisciplinary approach. General areas of research include a variety of topics:

1. Innate immunity, inflammation, innate control of adaptive immunity, and mucosal immunology;
2. Autoimmunity, histocompatibility antigens and disease, immune response to cancer, lymphocyte activation and signaling, cytokines, T- and B-cell interactions, and regulation of immunoglobulin synthesis;
3. Transplantation immunology and graft-versus-host reactions