Burkhard Becher, PhD

Research Interests:

Fundamentally, deregulated communication between immune cells is the reason for unwanted immune responses. For the complex immune system to work, the individual cell types have not only specialized functions, but also a complex communication network. Cytokines are soluble factors with the capacity to serve as signals for the communication between immune cells. Our goal is to uncover this communication network and to translate the language of the immunesystem.
Our research aims to understand the development of tissue-specific inflammation in particular in the context of interactions of the nervous system with the immune system.
Related to our studies of autoimmunity (an undesired process) we expanded our interest to apply our tool-set and expertise to study the impact of immunity to combat cancer (a desired process).
Our main research interests can be categorized as such:

• Cytokine networks in chronic inflammatory disease with a focus on in vivo modeling of multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, graft-versus host disease
• Immune tolerance and lymphoid development
• Cancer-immunotherapy: specifically the interaction of immune cells with cancer cells and therapeutic interventions to mount immune responses against tumors