Dr. Jeffrey Ravetch is the 2012 Canada Gairdner International Award winner for his seminal work on identifying the Fc receptors of antibodies, which play a key role in the immune response, and for establishing their critical role in autoimmune diseases and cancer. He will be presenting his talk entitled, “Antibodies as Therapeutics – Why the Fc Matters”

Antibodies work in the immune system to defend against bacteria and viruses. But antibodies can also trigger diseases such as arthritis and lupus. Dr. Ravetch discovered how antibodies can trigger different outcomes by binding to molecules (called Fc receptors) to change their activity. The Fc receptor allows antibodies to defend against toxins, bacteria and viruses.
The discovery of the Fc Receptor has changed how we think about the immune system by explaining the receptor’s puzzling dual nature as both protective and harmful. This knowledge paves the way to developing new therapies to fight autoimmune diseases such as lupus, arthritis and cancer. His laboratory has focused on the mechanisms by which antibodies mediate their diverse biological activities in vivo – establishing the pre-eminence of FcR pathways in inflammation and tolerance and describing novel inhibitory signalling pathways to account for the paradoxical roles of antibodies as promoting and suppressing inflammation.

Dr. Ravetch has received numerous awards, and has presented many named lectures. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006 and to its Institute of Medicine in 2007. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2009 he became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.