Jeffrey Ravetch, M.D., Ph.D.
Rockefeller University
About Jeffrey Ravetch, M.D., Ph.D.
Jeffrey V. Ravetch, M.D., Ph.D. is currently the Theresa and Eugene Lang Professor at the Rockefeller University and Head of the Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology. Dr. Ravetch, a native of New York City, received his undergraduate training in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, earning his B.S. degree in 1973, working with Donald M. Crothers on the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of synthetic oligoribo nucleotides. He continued his training at the Rockefeller University–Cornell MedicalSchool MD/Ph.D program, earning his doctorate in 1978 in genetics with Norton Zinder and Peter Model, investigating the genetics of viral replication and gene expression for the single stranded DNA bacteriophage f1. In 1979 he earned his M.D. from Cornell University Medical School. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the NIH with Phil Leder where he identified and characterized the genes for human antibodies and the DNA elements involved in switch recombination. From 1982 to 1996 Dr. Ravetch was a member of the faculty of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell Medical College. His laboratory has focused on the Fc domain of antibodies and the receptors it engages, determining the mechanisms by which this domain enables antibodies to mediate their diverse biological activities in vivo. His work established the novel structural basis for Fc domain functional diversity and the pre-eminence of FcR pathways in host defense, inflammation and tolerance, describing novel inhibitory signaling pathways to account for the paradoxical roles of antibodies as promoting and suppressing inflammation. His work has been widely extended into clinical applications for the treatment of neoplastic, inflammatory and infectious diseases. Dr. Ravetch has received numerous awards including the Burroughs-Wellcome Scholar Award, the Pew Scholar Award, the Boyer Award, the NIH Merit Award, the Lee C. Howley, Sr. Prize(2004), the AAI-Huang Foundation Meritorious Career Award (2005),the William B. Coley Award (2007), the Sanofi-Pasteur Award (2012), the Gairdner International Prize (2012), the Wolf Prize in Medicine (2015), the Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine (2017), the Robert Koch award (2018) and the William Paul Memorial Award (2021). He has presented numerous named lectures including the Kunkel Lecture, the Ecker Lecture, the Goidl Lecture, the Grabar Lecture, the Dyer Lecture, the Heidelberger/Kabat Lecture, the Josephson Lecture, the Distinguished Scientist Lecture at the Academia Sinicaand the Benacerraf Lecture. He has received an honorary doctorate from Friedrich-Alexander University, Nuremberg/Erlangen. He is a member of NationalAcademy of Sciences (2006), theInstitute of Medicine (2007), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2008) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009). Ravetch has contributed extensively to the scientific community by serving as a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Cancer Research Institute, the Irvington Institute for Medical Research, the Damon Runyon Foundation, the medical advisory board of Gairdner Foundation, the Sanofi-Pasteur Award Jury and the L’Oreal Women in Science Jury. He has been active in biotechnology for the last three decades, and currently serves as a consultant or member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of Asylia, Biohaven, Harpoon, IgGenix, Jasper, Nuvig, Palleon, Seismic, Vir and Xencor.
