Matthew Daniel Scharff

Professor of Cell Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Deputy Director, Cancer Center. Research on the generation of antibody diversity and the role of antibodies in the resistance to infectious diseases. He has used antibody forming cells in tissue culture and somatic cell genetics to study the synthesis, assembly and secretion of antibody and contributed to the hybridoma technology that is used to generate monoclonal antibodies. He has made monoclonal antibodies that protect mice from lethal infection with Cryptococcus neoformans and are being immunosuppressed hosts. He also studies the molecular mechanisms responsible for isotype switching and somatic hypermutation of antibody genes.