Sebastian Amigorena is “Directeur de Recherche Classe Exceptionnelle” at CNRS, Director of the “Center of Immunotherapy for cancers” and the “Immune responses and cancer” Team at Institut Curie (Paris, France), in the Immunology Department "Immunity and Cancer" that he created in 2003 and directed until 2021.
Dr. Amigorena discovered ITIMs, explored specialized intracellular compartments where peptides are loaded on MHC molecules, pioneered the field of antigen cross presentation in dendritic cells showing how these specializations contribute to the initiation of adaptive immune responses. His findings modified our understanding of antigen presentation and T cell priming by dendritic cells, with applications in the fields of cancer immunotherapy and vaccination. Dr. Amigorena published over 200 original articles in many top impact journals, is a member of the French Academy of Science and an elected EMBO member. His international leadership is reflected by the numerous prices and awards, including the Silver Medal from CNRS (2004) and twice the prestigious senior European Research Council (ERC) award (2008 and 2014).

Dr Christopher Buckley obtained a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford (1985) with subsequent undergraduate training in Medicine (MBBS) at the Royal Free Hospital, London (1990). His postgraduate medical training was in General Medicine and Rheumatology at the Hammersmith Hospital, London (Mark Walport, Dorian Haskard), and John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. He obtained a DPhil arising from a Wellcome Trust Clinical Training Fellowship with John Bell and David Simmons at the Institute Molecular Medicine, Oxford in 1996.

Funded by a Wellcome Trust Clinician Scientist Fellowship, Dr Buckley joined the Department of Rheumatology in Birmingham later that year. In 2001 he was awarded an MRC Senior Clinical Fellowship and in 2002 became Arthritis Research UK Professor of Rheumatology. In 2012 he was appointed Director of the Birmingham NIHR Clinical Research Facility.

In May 2017 Dr Buckley took up a new joint academic post between the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Oxford and Director of NIHR Infrastructure in Birmingham for Birmingham Health Partners to Direct the Arthritis Therapy Acceleration Programme (A-TAP). In September 2021 he moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Oxford as Director of Clinical Research.
 

Dr. Mathis obtained a PhD from the University of Rochester, and performed postdoctoral studies at the Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire des Eucaryotes in Strasbourg, France and at Stanford University Medical Center. She returned to Strasbourg at the end of 1983, establishing a laboratory at the LGME [later the Institut de Genetique et de Biologie Moleculare et Cellulaire (IGBMC)] in conjunction with Dr. Christophe Benoist. The lab moved to the Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston in 1999. Through 2008, Dr. Mathis was a Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Associate Research Director and Head of the Section on Immunology and Immunogenetics at Joslin. Dr. Mathis is currently a Professor in the Department Immunology at HMS, and holder of the Morton Grove-Rasmussen Chair in Immunohematology. She is also a Principal Faculty Member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an Associate Faculty Member of the Broad Institute. She presently serves on Advisory Boards of Rockefeller University, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Genentech, Pfizer, Amgen and Janssen Immunosciences (amongst others), and of several research institutes worldwide.  Dr. Mathis was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2003, the German Academy in 2007, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. She received the FASEB Excellence in Science Award in 2016, the Rabbi Shai Shacknai Memorial Prize in Immunology and Cancer Research in 2018 and the Ulf von Euler Award in 2022.
Her lab works in the fields of T cell differentiation, autoimmunity and inflammation. She has trained over 175 students and postdoctoral fellows.

 

Chenqi Xu is now a principle investigator at Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry (SIBCB), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also serves as a deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Chenqi received his B.S. in Biochemistry from East China Normal University in 1998. He completed his PhD training in protein chemistry with Dr. Chengwu Chi in 2004 at SIBCB. A part of his PhD work was done in University of Leuven and University of Hasselt in Belgium, under supervision of Drs. Jan Tytgat and Emmy Van Kerkhove. He then received postdoctoral training in immunology with Dr. Kai Wucherpfennig at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School. In 2009, he moved back to SIBCB to start his independent program focusing on T cell signaling and metabolism. The Xu lab has developed cutting-edge biochemical and biophysical tools to study immunoreceptor signaling and translates the basic knowledge to the development of engineered T cell therapy. In addition, he is interested in the fundamental functions of membrane lipids in T cell biology and have demonstrated the application potential of cholesterol-based immunotherapy. His works have been published in Nature, Cell and other prestigious journals, and selected as Top 10 Science Breakthroughs in China
 

Dr. Marc Bajenoff performed his doctoral training under the supervision of Dr S. Guerder at the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille Luminy (CIML). He then joined the laboratory of Prof Glaichenhaus (Valbonne, France) and Prof R. Germain at the Lymphocyte Biology Section, National Institutes of Health for his post-doctoral studies. Here, he developed the first applications of the 2-photon methods for intravital imaging to an extensive analysis of the function of stromal elements within lymphoid tissues. In 2010, he established the “Immunobiology of stromal cells” group at CIML and in 2015, he was awarded an ERC consolidator grant to study the dynamics of lymphoid stromal cells.

His general research interests are in understanding the immunobiology of stromal cells and how these versatile cells control the immune system at multiple levels. More recently, his laboratory has developed a strong interest in studying the crosstalk between stromal cells and macrophages across tissues.
 

Prof. Dirk Busch, MD, is a clinician-scientist and specialist for medical microbiology and immunology. He is director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). His research is focused on the investigation of T cell immunity, especially to isolate or engineer antigen-specific T cells for (adoptive) immunotherapies to treat infections or cancer.Prof. Busch is the chairman of the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF). He is speaker of the SFB initiative TRR338 LETSimmun (Lymphocyte Engineering for Therapeutic Synthetic immunity), and is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He has received various awards and honors, among them the Robert Koch and Howard-Hughes Medical Institute Postdoc Prizes, the Sir-Hans Krebs Prize and the Wilhelm Vaillant Prize. Prof. Busch was co-founder of two spin-off companies, STAGE cell therapeutics (now Juno/BMS) and T Cell Factory (now Kite/Gilead).
 

Dr. Andrea Brendolan trained in immunology at Stanford and in developmental biology at Cornell Medica Center in NY. Since 2008, he has been a group leader in the Department of Experimental Oncology at San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy.
Research in his group focuses on understanding the origin and function of non-hematopoietic lymphoid tissue stromal cells in physiology and cancer, and on translating basic principles of lymphoid organogenesis to generate synthetic lymphoid microenvironments for applications in oncology and regenerative medicine. His laboratory uses multidisciplinary approaches ranging from mouse genetics to multi-omics approaches and imaging coupled to 3D dynamic lymphoid microenvironments.

Dr. Nina Cabezas-Wallscheid is group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg (Germany). Her group studies how hematopoietic stem cell dormancy is regulated in healthy and in the context of hematological, nutritional disorders and aging. Her laboratory is pursuing interdisciplinary projects that include the use of genetic mouse models, dietary treatments and primary human patient material in combination with the development of state-of-the-art omics, single-cell techniques and bioinformatic analysis (Schönberger*, Obier* et al., Cell Stem Cell 2022; Schönberger et al., STAR Protocols 2022; Zhang et al., Nature Cell Biology 2022; Sommerkamp*, Romero-Mulero* et al., Blood 2021). Dr. Cabezas-Wallscheid received an ERC Starting Grant in 2017 and is part of the EMBO Young Investigator Program since 2022. She was honored with the German Stem Cell Network 2018 Young Investigator Award and this year with the Janet Rowley Award by the International Society of Experimental Hematology.
 

Julie Déchanet-Merville received her PhD in Immunology from the University of Lyon (France) in 1995. There, she studied the final stages of B lymphocyte differentiation in the Schering-Plough laboratory for Immunological Research directed by Dr. Jacques Banchereau.  She then experienced in the field of human transplantation immunology along a fellowship in the team of Pr. Jean-Francois Moreau in Bordeaux University. She was recruited as junior scientist by the CNRS in 1998 and settled a research group focused on the implication of DC-SIGN and of human gamma-delta T cells in the host response to cytomegalovirus infection. Her team discovered the antiviral role of gamma-delta T lymphocytes against human cytomegalovirus and pioneered studies on their function and antigen specificity. She develops a basic and translational research focused on the functions of human gamma-delta T lymphocytes in the context of cancer, viral infections and organ transplantation. Her studies range from the molecular analysis of gamma-delta T cell antigens, to the development of pre-clinical mouse models and the investigation of patient cohorts. We developed technologies for T cell cultures and engineering, TCR protein analysis, production of monoclonal antibodies and TCR antigen identification. She currently heads a CNRS research laboratory (~80 staff members) and the flow cytometry facility in Bordeaux University. Many of her studies have involved tight and long-lasting interactions with the clinical transplantation department of Bordeaux University Hospital and collaborations with academic partners at the national and international levels. She more recently involved in local cancer research organizations, participating to the steering committees of SIRIC BRIO and Oncosphere, and leading the Bordeaux University Impulsion Network NEWMOON.  She is also engaged in the training of basic science and medical students in human immunology.

Gérard Eberl completed his PhD at the University of Lausanne on the structure of epitopes recognized by T cells, followed by a first post-doctoral fellowship at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, also in Lausanne, on the development and function of invariant NKT cells. A second post-doctorate in New York led him to characterize the role of the nuclear hormone receptor RORgt in innate lymphoid cells (ILC). In 2005, Gérard was recruited to the Institut Pasteur in Paris to lead the Lymphoid Tissue Development Unit, which became the Microenvironment & Immunity Unit in 2015. For 10 years now, his laboratory has been studying the impact of symbiotic microbiota on the development and activity of the immune system, mainly in the gut, but also at more distant sites, such as adipose tissue and the lung. More recently, he has been interested in understanding how the microbiota also influences mouse behavior through activation of the innate immune system, and how the nervous system modulates immune responses. From 2015 to 2019, Gerard was the director of the immunology department at the Institut Pasteur.

 

Christine Falk is full professor for Transplant Immunology at MHH with a long-term research interest in transplant and tumor immunology and the interface to infectious diseases in solid organ transplantation. Major aspects of her research are the impact of chimerism and tissue-resident memory lymphocytes, donor-specific antibodies in organ, primarily lung, transplantation. In addition, she is interested in the identification of "common denominators" of tumor vs. organ rejection and protection from infection as well as COVID-19 disease and vaccine responses. She has published more than 200 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and received the Walter Schulz award for Tumor Immunology and the “Unsung Hero Award” of Women in Transplantation (WIT) as part of The Transplantation Society (TTS). She is past-president of the German Society of Immunology (DGfI), served as president of the Joint DGFI / ÖGAI Immunology Meeting in 2022 and for many years, co-organizer of the DGfI Spring School in Ettal. At MHH, she serves as trust lecturer of the DFG, member of dissertation and research committees as well as member of scientific advisory boards at the German Primate Center (DPZ), Hochschulrat of Leibniz University Hannover, Kuratorium of Volkswagen Foundation, board member of the German Cancer Aid Foundation. From 12/2021 to 04/2023, she was member of the Corona Pandemic Board of experts of the German Chancellery and since 01/2023, she is also member of the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) and for many years, editorial board member of several scientific journals.
 

Julie Helft leads the “Phagocyte and Cancer Immunology” lab at Institut Cochin in Paris. During her PhD in France and post-doctoral trainings in the US and the UK, Julie has made several contributions on the role of dendritic cell subsets in the regulation of T cell immunity. Her lab now focuses on deciphering the crosstalks between phagocytes and the tumor microenvironment. In particular the lab studies the role of macrophage subsets in regulating CD8+ T cell infiltration and activation within tumors. The lab also studies the mechanisms underlying the systemic accrual of myeloid cells during cancer development. At last, the lab develops proof of concepts for macrophage-targeted therapies to enhance T cell immunity against tumors and to improve response to checkpoint blockade immunotherapies.
 

Veit Hornung studied medicine at the University of Munich (Germany) and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Munich and the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester (USA). From 2008 to 2015, he was a professor at the University of Bonn (Germany) and in 2015 was appointed to the Chair of Immunobiochemistry at the Gene Center of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. Veit's research focuses on the mechanisms of non-self recognition by the innate immune system and their functional consequences in microbial infections as well as in sterile inflammation. His group has been involved in the identification and characterization of various receptor molecules, their ligands and their downstream signaling cascades. Since 2014, Veit has been listed as a highly cited researcher in the field of immunology. He was elected an EMBO member in 2015 and a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2016. His current research is funded by the European Research Council and the German Research Foundation.

Carolyn King received her BS in Biology at Duke University.  After 3 years working as a business analyst and lab technician (UCSF, San Francisco, USA and Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda), Carolyn went to the University of Pennsylvania for her PhD, where studied the role of TRAF6 in T cell tolerance.  With support from EMBO and HFSP, she carried out a postdoctoral fellowship in Basel, Switzerland where she identified asymmetric cell division as mechanism linking T cell receptor signal strength with pathogenic T cell differentiation.  In 2016, she began her independent group at the Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel.  The King lab focuses on understanding the molecular underpinnings of CD4 T cell responses during infection with a focus on T cells that support antibody production by B cells.  More recently this work has expanded to investigate how antibodies and macrophage remodeling intersect to modulate pulmonary immunity to globally relevant pathogens including influenza and tuberculosis.
 

Nathalie Labarriere, PhD and Inserm research director, is responsible for the Team 3 (Tumor immune responses and Immunotherapy), certified by the “Ligue contre le Cancer”, of the INCIT unit (Nantes, France). She started to work in 1990 on tumor immunology in Nantes (France), and then switched from 1994 to 1995 to upstream biological issues dealing with transcription factors in the De Duve Institute of cellular Pathology (Brussels, Belgium). In 1995, she joined the group of F. Jotereau in Nantes and she developed research programs on translational immunology, with a strong collaboration with clinical teams, especially in the field of melanoma immunotherapy, with Pr. B. Dreno.
Since 2010, she took over the leadership of the team whose work led to several clinical trials of adoptive transfer of tumor specific T lymphocytes in melanoma patients. Nathalie Labarrière has authored 80 publications and reviews and 6 patents. She is also responsible for the cytometry facility of the SFR Santé, involved in several councils and scientific committees in the field of immunotherapy, and deputy director of the INCIT unit.

After receiving his PhD in Immunology at Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy (CIML), Bernard Malissen spent two years as a Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and then became a team leader at CIML. He pioneered in the eighties the use of gene transfer approaches to dissect the function of molecules involved in T cell function (MHC and TCR). He also elucidated the atomic structure of several TCR in complex with peptide-MHC ligand, providing explanation for TCR cross-reactivity and alloreactivity. In the late eighties, the possibility to edit the mouse genome “à la carte” led him to develop innovative mouse models allowing to tackle the function of T cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells in their in vivo physiological context. To make sense of the formidable complexity of the signal transduction networks involved in T cell activation, his team presently combines high-throughput “omic” approaches designed to further the understanding of T cell function under normal and pathological conditions.
 


 

Michael Reth, PhD received his Diploma in Biology and PhD in Genetic in the laboratory of Prof. K. Rajewsky at the University of Cologne, Germany.  After completing a post-doctoral stay in the laboratory of Dr. F. Alt in the department of biochemistry of Columbia University, New York, USA, he joined the Cologne Institute of Genetics as a junior group leader in 1985.  In 1988 the Nobel laureate Dr. G. Köhler recruited him as a permanent group leader to the Max-Planck-Institute for Immunology in Freiburg. Michael Reth is currently a Senior professor of Molecular Immunology at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg, Germany and a Co-director of the excellence cluster for biological signaling studies (BIOSS) and has over 222 peer-reviewed publications. He discovered the signaling subunits (CD79a and CD79b) of the B cell antigen receptor (BCR) and the immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM). In 2010 he proposed together with Dr. Jianying Yang the dissociation activation model (DAM) a new mechanism for antigen dependent B lymphocyte activation. Currently he is studying the cryo-EM structures of the IgM-BCR and the nanoscale organization of the plasma membrane of normal B and B tumor cells.  He is a member of numerous societies such as EMBO and the German National Academy (Leopoldina). In 2018 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).  He served on the editorial board for International Immunology and Annual Review of Immunology. Michael Reth was awarded an advanced ERC grant in 2013 and the Paul Ehrlich Prize in 2014.
 

Pauline Soulas-Sprauel is PharmD, Professor of Immunology and group leader at the Strasbourg biomedicine research center (CRBS) of the Inserm U1109 laboratory. Her group works in close collaboration with the Department of Clinical Immunology and Internal Medicine of Strasbourg University Hospital and focuses on the mechanisms ensuring B- and T-cell homeostasis and their deregulation in inflammation. In addition, they closely investigate tolerance breakdown leading to the development of autoimmunity during autoimmune diseases and primary immunodeficiencies using transgenic mouse models as well as human samples from patients. After a thesis on B cell tolerance breakdown, Prof. Pauline Soulas-Sprauel carried out her postdoctoral work in the team of Dr Jean-Pierre de Villartay in the laboratory of Prof. Alain Fischer in Paris, where she developed new mouse models for the study of VDJ recombination. Among her current projects is the study of new roles of STING in lymphocyte development and functions.

Hedda Wardemann is a B cell immunologist with a primary interest in antibody repertoires and the functional evolution of human B cell antibody responses and memory formation. The Division of B Cell Immunology uses single-cell gene repertoire analyses to measure the diversity and to track the clonal evolution of B cells and more recently also T cells in health and disease. In combination with monoclonal antibody and TCR expression cloning the group aims to define the quality of human B and T cell responses and to develop targeted intervention strategies to direct immune responses, e.g. through active or passive vaccination.