BUSM Lecture Honors Victim of 9/11 Tragedy
The ninth annual Sue Kim Hanson Lecture in Immunology will be held at noon on Friday, Sept. 17, in BUSM’s Keefer Auditorium. The annual lecture honors Sue Kim Hanson, MA, PhD ’02, a former researcher in BUSM’s Pulmonary Center. Hanson, her husband and their daughter were passengers on one of the airplanes that struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
This year’s lecturer is Dan R. Littman, MD, PhD, a professor of pathology and microbiology at New York University. The lecture, “Microbiota and HIV at the interface of innate and adaptive immunity,” will focus on how specific commensal bacteria act to shape our immune system and how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV, the virus that causes AIDS) exploits a cell type of the innate immune system, the dendritic cell, to enhance its ability to infect T-helper cells.
Littman has a distinguished research career on the interaction between HIV and the CD4+ T-cells, the specific immune cell it infects and damages. He also investigates the molecular mechanism by which these cells make the transition from immaturity to fully functional (‘differentiated’) T-cells.
Sue Kim Hanson moved to Boston and earned a master’s degree in medical sciences from BUSM in 1992. After graduation she joined the school’s Pulmonary Center and then entered BUSM’s doctoral program in the Immunology Training Program through the department of pathology and laboratory medicine.
Her dissertation project was an investigation of the role of interleukin-16 in immunity and targeted deletion of the interleukin-16 gene in mice. Her degree was awarded posthumously by unanimous vote by the dissertation committee.
“Sue was on her way to a promising career in molecular biology,” said David Center, MD, Gordon and Ruth Snider professor of pulmonary medicine and associate provost for translational research. “While her life was taken at an early age, her legacy lives on through this annual lecture. We are proud to remember and honor her and her family each year.”