Dr. Snapper received his B.S., summa cum laude, from Tufts University (1983) and completed his M.D. and Ph.D (Microbiology and Immunology) from Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1990).  He completed his Residency in Internal Medicine (1993) at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (BWH) and then Fellowship training in Gastroenterology (1997) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) – including post-doctoral work at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH). Dr. Snapper spent 18 years at MGH as a physician:scientist rising up the ranks to Associate Chief of Research.  In 2011, Dr. Snapper became the Wolpow Family Chair and Director of the Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease at BCH and joined the clinical and research faculty at BWH.  In January 2020, Dr. Snapper became the Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at BCH. Dr. Snapper is Professor of Medicine and the Egan Family Foundation Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Snapper has authored over 200 original articles and book chapters, and receives multiple grants from the NIH, the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, the Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Rainin Foundation, and from major pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Snapper is on the editorial board of several journals, is a member of numerous scientific advisory boards of major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, served as a permanent member of the Gastrointestinal Mucosal Pathobiology Study Section of the NIH, is on the scientific advisory board of the Rainin Foundation, and is the past chair of the National Scientific Advisory Committee of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation.

For the last two decades, his laboratory has been investigating how the adaptive and innate arms of the immune system (in concert with the intestinal microbiota) maintain health in the intestine.  One longstanding focus has been to understand how a defective immune system can contribute simultaneously to both immunodeficiency and intestinal inflammation with a focus on human immunodeficiencies. He and his team have developed novel mouse strains that permit them to study the role of human immune cells in mice. Over the last ten years, the Snapper laboratory has combined deep basic research in cells and mice with IBD translational research in patients of all ages to characterize new genes/cells/pathways that are associated with IBD. The laboratory is currently testing novel treatment strategies to manipulate immunoregulatory circuits in mice and man for IBD disease prevention and therapy.