Magdalena Huber

Research Interests:

Our aim is to understand the mechanisms of immunopathological processes involving aberrated T cell function in autoimmunity, asthma or cancer. To this regard, we characterize T cell plasticity directed by specific transcriptional and/or metabolic factors with impact on immunopathology. In ongoing studies we focus on following topics:

• Regulation of plasticity between non-cytotoxic IL-17-producing CD8⁺ T (Tc17) cells versus cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs)
• Transcriptional control of IL-9 producing CD4⁺ T (Th9) cell versus IFN-γ producing Th1 cells
• Influence of tumor-microenvironment on CD8⁺ T cells and identification of factors responsible for tumor escape

To approach our research interests we include multi-color flow-cytometry, retroviral-overexpression of proteins in primary T cells, primary murine and human T cell cultures and analysis of patient material, immunological assays, metabolic assays, biochemical and molecular methods as well as pre-clinical mouse models.