2026 M. Irené Ferrer Awardee, Columbia University
Arnold Han, MD, PhD, is the 2026 M. Irené Ferrer Awardee and an Assistant Professor of Medicine in Digestive and Liver Diseases and of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University. Dr. Arnold Han studies T cells, immune cells that play a critical role in how they behave in cancer and autoimmune diseases.
What is Dr. Arnold S. Han researching?
Dr. Han’s research seeks to understand why T cells sometimes fail to attack cancer cells and, conversely, why they can become overactive and attack healthy tissue in autoimmune diseases.
Why study sex differences in autoimmune disease?
Women have a much higher incident of autoimmune diseases compared with men. Dr. Han’s Foundation-supported research is particularly interested in a novel therapy for autoimmune disease and whether sex influences the development of the disease or the response to treatment.
What has Dr. Han found?
Dr. Han’s laboratory has made important discoveries about how T cells contribute to diseases. In celiac disease, for example, his research has helped uncover how exposure to gluten triggers an immune response that ultimately leads certain T cells to damage intestinal tissue.
His team has also developed advanced technology that allows researchers to study individual T cells in remarkable detail, including what each cell recognizes and how it functions. This could help scientists identify disease-causing T cells more precisely and eventually develop new T-cell-based therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
How did The Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine’s grant help Dr. Han’s research?
Dr. Han has described the Foundation’s grant as “instrumental in advancing the early stages of our work.” He is currently doing initial work on a novel treatment for auto immune diseases, testing which is more effective in one sex compared to the other.
Early support of new research efforts allows researchers to test new ideas and generate preliminary data that can lay the groundwork for larger studies and future research funding.
The Ferrer support often helps generate data that support requests for larger grants.
In 2025, Dr. Han and Dr. Kelley Yan received a five-year NIH/NIDDK R01 grant for a project investigating how T helper cells interact with colon stem cells and how those interactions may contribute to the development of colorectal cancer. Dr. Han also continues his work on intestinal autoimmune diseases, including celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), studying the mechanisms that trigger T-cell inflammation and ultimately cause intestinal tissue damage.