Jeffrey A. Gelfand, MD

He is a Senior Scientist in the MGH Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center. He is also Adjunct Faculty in the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at MGH. He was a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine of Tufts University School of Medicine from 1994 to 1998. He has conducted laboratory and clinical research in immunology, inflammation and infection for over 40 years. He was part of the team that developed the therapy and led the clinical trial for the treatment of hereditary angioedema with danazol, also first using that drug in autoimmune thrombocytopenia. He remains actively involved in clinical trials.

Most recently, his research interests have focused on vaccines and immuno-therapeutics for infectious diseases and cancer. At MGH he developed a monoclonal antibody/vaccine fusion targeting ovarian cancer, and a “self-assembling vaccine” platform to enable rapid vaccine creation for emerging infectious diseases; the latter work was funded by DARPA and is now the basis for ongoing vaccines. He holds 11 issued U.S. patents for such therapies. He initiated the first published clinical investigations on the use of lasers as a vaccine adjuvant. This in turn led him to explore other light-based therapies, including phototherapy of bacterial infections, for which he currently holds Defense Department grants and additional patent applications.

In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “for distinguished contributions to clinical immunology and vaccine development’’.