RESEARCH

Our primary research activities concentrate on molecular aspects of the humoral immune response in health and disease. In particular, we want to decipher how small non-coding RNAs (miRNA and lncRNAs), metabolic re-programming, anti-inflammatory metabolites, the microbiota of the gut, the micromilieu, and selected transcription factors control the differentiation of B cells into memory B cells and antibody-secreting plasma cells and maintain humoral memory and B cell tolerance.

We also develop human therapeutic antibodies against pathological B cell and plasma cell subsets and cytokines in a genetically modified mouse model carrying only human antibody genes.

To address these questions, we use conditional knock-out mouse  models, and state-of-the-art methods such as various CRISP/Cas approaches in primary B cells, fluorescence-based cell sorting, metabolic Seahorse technology, and single- cell transcriptome and proteome analyses.