Monika Wolkers, PhD

Research Interests:

Our long-term research interest is to define the human T cell effector function under physiological and pathological conditions. Specifically, we aim to define the characteristics of potent cytotoxic T cells and to unravel the mechanisms that fine-tune the production of effector molecules, with a specific focus on post-transcriptional events herein. We use this information to define how T cells can be exploited for therapeutic purposes, in particular for immunotherapy of solid tumors. In ongoing studies, we study:

• The role of RNA-binding proteins in fine-tuning T cell effector function
• Defining the rules of protein translation in T cells
• Optimizing T cell therapy for treating solid tumors

The experimental strategies to address our research interests include multi-color flow-cytometry, imaging, biochemical and molecular approaches, Crispr-CAS mediated gene-editing of human T cells, transcriptomics and proteomics analyses, and machine learning.