Mario Rosemblatt is a Chilean immunologist. His research established that dendritic cells are responsible for imprinting the tissue-specific homing of T lymphocytes. He is currently Executive Director of Fundacion Ciencia para la Vida (FCV), a non profit institution that carries out scientific and technological research. He is Immunology Professor at the University of Chile and Universidad Nacional Andres Bello (Santiago, Chile) and Adjunct Professor at Dartmouth Medical School.
Biography
Mario Rosemblatt earned his Ph.D. degree in immunology at Wayne State University. He has been Research Fellow in Medicine at Harvard University (1973) joining the group of Dr. Edgar Haber, Assistant Professor at Brown University (1976), Investigator at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute (1978) and the Association Against Cancer in France (1981). In 1983, he returned to Chile and joined the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Chile. He was Chairman of the Biology Department and Director of the team that established the degree in Biotechnology at the University of Chile, acting as the first Director of this program. In 1997 he joined the Fundación Ciencia para la Vida acting as its first Executive Director.
Research
During his years at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute Dr. Rosemblatt was the first to publish a report on the use of monoclonal antibody technology to study muscle physiology. The main aspects of his research deals with studies related to the function of regulatory T cells. His team has demonstrated that although B cells and dendritic cells can generate regulatory T cells by themselves, a mixture of both antigen-presenting cells improves their capacity to efficiently generate regulatory T cells. He also has established that gut dendritic cells are responsible for the production of retinoic acid and therefore for the induction of a tolerogenic environment in the gut. As an immunologist he participated in the development of a salmon vaccine –presently in the market, licensed to Novartis- against the Pitsireckettsia salmonis a deadly pathogen that affects the salmon industry in Chile. Mario Rosemblatt is a member of the American Association of Immunologists, of the Transplantation Society, of the Chilean Society for Cell Biology and the Chilean Society of Immunology.