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INFORMATION FOR

    David A. Hafler, MD, FANA

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    About

    Titles

    William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor of Neurology and Professor of Immunobiology

    Chair, Neurology

    Neurologist-in-Chief, Yale New Haven Hospital

    Education

    MD
    University of Miami School of Medicine (1978)


    BS
    Emory College, Chemistry (1974)


    Training

    Post-Doctoral Fellowship
    Harvard Medical School (1986)


    Chief Resident
    The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute (1982)


    About

    The Department of Neurology provides clinical care of the highest quality, trains students, fellows, house-staff, and practicing physicians with the goal of creating leaders in neurology and neuroscience, and advances knowledge about neurological diseases via basic and clinical research programs using the most advanced methods to study the nervous system.

    Titles

    William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor of Neurology and Professor of Immunobiology

    Chair, Neurology; Neurologist-in-Chief, Yale New Haven Hospital

    Biography

    Dr. Hafler is the William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor and Chairman Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine and is the Neurologist-in-Chief of the Yale-New Haven Hospital. He graduated magna cum laude in 1974 from Emory University with combined B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in biochemistry, and the University of Miami School of Medicine in 1978. He then completed his internship in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins followed by a neurology residency at Cornell Medical Center-New York Hospital in New York.

    Dr. Hafler received training in immunology at the Rockefeller University then at Harvard where he joined the faculty in 1984. He was one of the Executive Directors of the Program in Immunology at Harvard Medical School and was on the faculty of the Harvard-MIT Health Science and Technology program where he was actively involved in the training of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.

    Hafler, in many respects, is credited with identifying the central mechanisms underlying the likely cause of MS. His early seminal work demonstrated that the disease began in the blood, not the brain, which eventually led to the development of Tysabri to treat the disease by blocking the movement of immune cells from the blood to the brain. He was the first to identify myelin-reactive T cells in the disease, published in Nature, showing that indeed, MS was an autoimmune disorder. He then went on to show why autoreactive T cells were dysregulated by the first identification of regulatory T cells in humans followed by demonstration of their dysfunctional state in MS. As a founding, Broad Institute associate member, Hafler identified the genes that cause MS, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature. More recently, he identified the key transcription factors and signaling pathways associated with MS genes as potential treatment targets. Finally, he recently discovered that salt drives induction of these pathogenic myelin reactive T cells, both works published in Nature. Hafler was the Breakstone Professor of Neuroscience at Harvard, and became Chairman of Neurology at Yale in 2009, where he has built an outstanding clinical and research program that strongly integrates medical sciences. Hafler is among the most highly cited living neurologists and has received numerous honors including the Dystel Prize from the AAN for his MS research, the Raymond Adams Award from the ANA, and was the recipient of the NIH Javits Investigator Award, and The Dale McFarlin Prize by the International Society of Neuroimmunology. He is a member of AOA, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and was elected into the National Academy of Medicine.

    Appointments

    Other Departments & Organizations

    Education & Training

    Post-Doctoral Fellowship
    Harvard Medical School (1986)
    Chief Resident
    The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute (1982)
    Assistant Resident
    The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute (1981)
    MD
    University of Miami School of Medicine (1978)
    BS
    Emory College, Chemistry (1974)
    MS
    Emory University (1974)
    Visiting Scientist
    Rockefeller University

    Research

    Overview

    Hafler is a major force in bridging basic immunology, genetics, and neurology deeply probing mechanisms to understand MS. His seminal work in 1985 demonstrating systemic immune involvement in MS (NEJM, 1985) was followed by the first identification of myelin, autoreactive T cells in MS (Nature 1990). In 2004, Hafler was the first to identify human FoxP3 regulatory T cells and then demonstrated that they are defective in MS (JEM, Nature Med, 2011). In 2001, he co-led the international effort that identified the first MS genes outside of MHC (NEJM, 2007) now with over 100 identified genes (Nature 2011). In 2009 Hafler was recruited to become Chairman of Yale Neurology and Professor of Neurology and Immunobiology where he has rapidly built an outstanding clinical program that strongly integrates medical sciences. His scientific leadership has continued where he has deeply examined the function of MS associated risk haplotypes demonstrating their significant biologic effects (JCI 2014), identified NaCl as an environmental cause of of inflammation (Nature 2013), and epigentically fine-mapped MS causal variants discovering the molecular pathways causing MS (Nature 2014). He has received innumerable professional distinctions including being becoming a Jacob Javits Scholar of the NIH, ASCI membership, the ISI most highly cited list, the University of Miami Distinguished Alumni Award and the prestigious John Dystel Prize from the American Academy of Neurology and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

    Medical Research Interests

    Autoimmunity; Brain Neoplasms; Multiple Sclerosis; Neurology; Neurosciences

    Public Health Interests

    Cancer; Genetics, Genomics, Epigenetics; HIV/AIDS; Immunology; Nutrition

    Research at a Glance

    Yale Co-Authors

    Frequent collaborators of David A. Hafler's published research.

    Publications

    2024

    See All Publications

    Clinical Trials

    Current Trials

    Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

    • honor

      Elected Member of National Academy of Medicine

      National AwardNational Academy of Medicine
    • honor

      Raymond D. Adams Lectureship

      National AwardAmerican Neurological Association
    • honor

      Distinguished Alumni “Hall of Fame” Award

      National AwardUniversity of Miami
    • honor

      John J. Dystel Prize for Multiple Sclerosis Research

      International AwardAmerican Academy of Neurology
    • honor

      Best Doctors in Boston

      National AwardBest of Boston
    See All Achievements

    Clinical Care

    Overview

    David Hafler, MD, is a world-renowned expert on multiple sclerosis (MS) and chair of the Department of Neurology, where he has presided over a major expansion in the last several years. He tells the neurologists who work for him to put patients first. “If I sense that a doctor does not care deeply about patients, they don’t belong at Yale,” he says.

    Dr. Hafler knew from a young age that he wanted to be a doctor and study the immune system. In elementary school, he made slides of his own blood and studied them under a microscope. “I took photographs. I still have them,” he says. Because most neurologic diseases are chronic, he has been treating many of his patients for more than 30 years. “Providing care for chronic disease is a very special part of being involved in someone’s life,” he says.

    A professor of neurology and of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Hafler is also a prolific researcher whose work has led to major advances in the understanding and treatment of MS, including identification of it as an autoimmune and genetic disease. He leads a lab at Yale that conducts cutting-edge research into MS and develops new treatments. Advances in treatment of MS have been remarkable, he says. “Back in the 1970s when I was in medical school, there were no treatments,” he says. “From where we were in 1975, say, we’ve come a long way.”

    Clinical Specialties

    Neurology; Multiple Sclerosis

    Fact Sheets

    Board Certifications

    • Neurology

      Certification Organization
      AB of Psychiatry & Neurology
      Original Certification Date
      1987

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    • Chair's Office, Department of Neurology

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      Lippard Lab for Clinical Investigation

      15 York Street, Ste Rm 912

      New Haven, CT 06510

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