
Michael Dustin, PhD
Michael Dustin, PhD Professor, University of OxfordWhile at the University of Washington, St. Louis, Prof. Dustin led a collaborative group in discovering requirements for the T cell immunological synapse. He then moved to the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, where he collaborated on new intravital microscopy projects. Continuation of work on the immunological synapse led to a basic description of the supramolecular assemblies that make up the mature immunological synapse. Specialized functions of the immunological synapse in cytotoxic T cells and regulatory T cells were also explored. This work includes the recent observation that the small vesicles enriched in T cell receptor, synaptic ectosomes, are directly budded into the immunological synapse, handing off T cell receptor and other cargo to the antigen presenting cell. He was director of the NIH funded Nanomedicine Center for Mechanobiology from 2009-2014 In order to further advance studies on the immunological synapse and translation to treatment of human diseases he moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford in 2013.