Timothy A. Springer

Timothy A. Springer, Ph.D. is the Latham Family Professor at the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Senior Investigator at the Program of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is a world leader in structural biology and immunology.

He discovered many of the adhesion receptors in the immune system with monoclonal antibodies, then cloned and functionally and structurally characterized, them. He was the first to demonstrate that lymphocytes and leukocytes had adhesion molecules. His work on these receptors has advanced to characterizing their interactions and allosteric transitions by x-ray crystallography, electron microscopy, and laser tweezers force spectroscopy. In recognition of this work, he received the Canada Gairdner International Award in 2019, and was recently awarded the Biophysical Society’s Founder’s Award in 2021.

He is a founder and private investor in biopharmaceutical ventures, including LeukoSite, Scholar Rock, Morphic Therapeutic, Moderna Therapeutic, Editas Medicine, Selecta Biosciences, and Ab Initio Biotherapeutics. His research and company formation has led to six FDA-approved drugs, including antibodies for treating cancer and immune diseases. Notably, he also co-founded the Institute for Protein Innovation: a non-profit to advance entrepreneurship and innovation in protein therapeutics and open-source antibodies and small molecules.