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Department of Quantitative Biomedicine, University of Zurich

Winterthurerstrasse 190, Y36L68
CH-8057 Zurich
Switzerland

Lab Website:

www.dqbm.uzh.ch/joller

Research Interests:

Our understanding of host-pathogen interaction is primarily derived from studying how the immune system protects us from a single pathogen. In contrast, it is largely unknown how this response alters the body’s ability to respond to a second infectious agent or the susceptibility to autoimmunity or cancer. Our goal is to investigate the long-term effects of pathogenic challenges on future responses. Currently, we are focusing on changes in the regulatory compartment of the adaptive immune system.
Specifically we aim to:

  • Analyze how regulatory T cell (Treg) function and the composition of the Treg compartment are affected by different types of infections
  • Determine how alterations in the Treg compartment affect susceptibility to infections and autoimmunity
  • Investigate how previous infections affect the susceptibility to an unrelated secondary challenge
  • Investigate how co-inhibitory receptors affect immune control of pathogens

To achieve this goal we use a wide variety of techniques including: transcriptomics, high dimensional flow cytometry, in vitro and in vivo immunological assays, animal models (infectious and autoimmune).