Network Director
Mark Anderson, MD, PhD, serves as Network Director for the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) where he previously has been a member of ITN’s Network Steering Committee and head of the mechanistic studies leadership team. At UCSF, Dr. Anderson is the Robert Friend and Michelle M. Friend Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research, Director of the Diabetes Center, a practicing Diabetologist, and a leading expert in the understanding of autoimmune diseases and their underpinnings. His major scientific contributions include unraveling the mechanisms by which a key transcription factor called Aire promotes immune tolerance and development of translational approaches that involve manipulating this key tolerance mechanism.
Dr. Anderson has served in leadership roles in the field of autoimmunity including serving as President of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) and as chair of the Hypersensitivity, Autoimmune and Immune-mediated Disease (HAI) study section for the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Anderson was also recently elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Anderson earned his PhD in Immunology and his M.D. from the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. He completed a residency in internal medicine at University of Minnesota and a fellowship in Adult Clinical Endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital.