Visiting Professor Lecture: "Neuronal Control of Cutaneous Inflammation"

All are welcome.

Daniel H. Kaplan, MD, PhD, is a professor in the Departments of Dermatology and Immunology, respectively, and director of the Cutaneous Research Core at the University of Pittsburgh.

His research is dedicated to understanding the mechanisms that underlie tissue-specific immunity and the interplay of different cell types, both immune and non-immune, that contribute to this process. He has made consistent progress in this area for approximately 20 years. As a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, Kaplan participated in the reinvigoration of the concept of tumor immunosurveillance by observing an increased frequency of skin tumors in immunodeficient mice (PNAS 1998). During his postdoctoral fellowship at Yale School of Medicine, he developed a number of mouse lines with a selective deficiency of Langerhans cells (LC) and showed that these cells have the unexpected capacity to suppress tissue immune responses (Immunity 2005). As an Assistant and later Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, Kaplan found that LC and dermal dendritic cells have unique functions in the development of anti-pathogen responses (Immunity 2011; Immunity 2015a).

His lab currently focuses on the contribution of non-hematopoetic cells to skin immunity, with a particular emphasis on how sensory neurons affect the development of immune responses in skin.

Kaplan has trained four MD/PhD students. Two are now in the early stages of establishing their academic research careers. The remaining two are finishing the MD portion of their training. He has also trained two PhD students. There are currently three MD/PhD students in his lab, and he has trained six postdocs. He has also served or chaired dozens of PhD thesis committees and served as an outside faculty mentor for MD/PhD students in other labs.