The Committee on Immunology offers a graduate program of study leading to the Ph.D. in Immunology, as well as an undergraduate specialization in Immunology, and courses for medical students. The program provides multidisciplinary training in all aspects of Immunology that includes a core immunology curriculum and several advanced graduate level courses in specialized areas. The training also integrates the basic biological sciences with the clinical sciences in an effort to develop new immunological approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of various immune diseases and cancer. Approximately thirty students are enrolled in the Ph.D. program, which has won training grant support from the NIH continuously for over thirty-five years.
In 2004 Cathryn Nagler, the Bunning Family Professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the Department of Pathology, was one of the first scientists to discover the link between intestinal bacteria and immunology. In 2014, Nagler discovered that Clostridia, a class of gut bacteria, protects against food allergies. Her research group is now working to find a treatment for food allergies via a microbiome-based treatment.