DC2022 Speakers confirmed to date

University of Antwerp, Belgium

Zwi N. Berneman, MD PhD FRCP is Professor of Hematology and Head of the Laboratory of Experimental Hematology at the University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium and Head of the Division of Hematology at the Antwerp University Hospital. His basic and clinical research is focused on vaccination with immunogenic dendritic cells in cancer (acute myeloid leukemia, glioblastoma, mesothelioma) and with tolerogenic dendritic cells in multiple sclerosis; and on retargeting T-lymphocytes against cancer with T-cell receptors directed against the tumor-associated Wilms’ tumor antigen WT1. His laboratory has pioneered mRNA electroporation as a clinically safe gene transfer methodology and has applied it to the fields of dendritic cells and T-lymphocytes. He has been conducting clinical trials with cultured dendritic cells since 2005. For this, he helped establish the Center for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine (CCRG) of which he is the Medical Director, at the Antwerp University Hospital and for which he obtained a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) Certification and Production License from the (Belgian) Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London, UK. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and his ISI h-index is 50.

Tisch Cancer Institute, USA

Dr. Bhardwaj is an immunologist who has made seminal contributions to human dendritic cell biology, specifically with respect to their isolation, subset discovery, immunobiology, antigen presenting function, and use as vaccine adjuvants in humans. She is the Director of Immunotherapy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) and holds the Ward Coleman Chair in Cancer Research. Dr. Bhardwaj brings expertise in human immunology and a variety of immune therapies, having developed Toll Like Receptor (TLR) agonist- and dendritic cell-based vaccines for the treatment of both cancer and infection in several Investigator-Initiated studies, and more recently supplication of neoantigen vaccines into the clinic. Dr. Bhardwaj is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians, a recipient of the Doris Duke Distinguished Scientist Award and was named one of the Scientific American Magazine’s Top 50 Researchers, receiving the Award for Medical Research in 2004. She received the Fred W. Alt Award for new discoveries in Immunology in 2015 from The Cancer Research Institute. Dr. Bhardwaj is a senior editor of the AACR Cancer Immunology Research journal, senior editor for Frontiers in Immunology and consulting editor for the Journal of Clinical Investigation. She has also served on NIH Study Sections and multiple advisory councils. Dr. Bhardwaj was formerly chair of the Cancer Immunology Steering Committee of the AACR. Dr. Bhardwaj has also successfully acquired multiple federal and foundation grants and has authored over 200 publications. Dr. Bhardwaj will serve as temporary chair of the AACR Nominating Committee.

Weill Cornell Medicine, USA

Julie Magarian Blander is a Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of Immunology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) In New York City. Dr. Blander received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh studying tumor immunology under the mentorship of Dr. Olivera Finn. She conducted her postdoctoral training with Drs. Charles Janeway and Ruslan Medzhitov at Yale University pioneering the study of the impact of Toll like receptors on macrophage and dendritic cell function. Dr. Blander’s laboratory studies various aspects of innate immunity and inflammation and their application to human disease. The laboratory was established in 2006 with the appointment of Dr. Blander as Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). Dr. Blander’s promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in 2011 at ISMMS was followed five years later by an appointment as full professor with tenure at WCM-Cornell University in 2016. Dr. Blander is a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at WCM. She is a member of the Executive Committee for the Cornell Center for Immunology at Cornell University, Associate co-director of NIH T32 grant to the Department of Medicine Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Course Director for the Advanced Topics of Immunology at the WCM/Sloan Kettering Institute Graduate School for Medical Sciences, member of the WCM Promotion and Appointment Review Committee, member of the WCM Research Awards Committee, member of the Senior Research Awards Committee for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, editorial board member of the Elsevier journal Current Research in Immunology, and Nominations Committee member for the American Association of Immunologists (AAI). Dr. Blander had also served as a member of the Program Committee for the AAI (2016-2019). Dr. Blander has received a 2018 Daedalus Award for Innovation from WCM. She was named Searle Scholar in 2007 and a Burroughs Wellcome Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease in 2011. She has received the 2009 G. Jeanette Thorbecke
Society of Leukocyte Biology award, an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar Award, and the J. V. Satterfield Arthritis Investigator Award from the Arthritis Foundation. Dr. Blander is currently funded by grants from Sanofi and the National Institutes of Health NIAID and NIDDK.

Washington University School of Medicine in St.Louis, Missouri

Dr. Marco Colonna was born in Parma, Italy, received his medical degree at Parma University and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA). He became a scientific member of the Basel Institute for Immunology in Basel, Switzerland. Since 2001 he has been a Professor of Pathology & Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. Dr. Colonna’s research focuses on immunoreceptors. In this field his accomplishments encompass identification and characterization of the Killer cell Ig-like receptors and HLA-C polymorphisms as their inhibitory ligands, as well as the discovery of the LILR and TREM inhibitory and activating receptor families. Through analysis of the cellular distribution of these receptors, he identified plasmacytoid dendritic cells as source of IFN-a/b in anti-viral responses and innate lymphoid cells that produce IL-22 in mucosae. His current areas of research include: 1) Innate lymphoid cells in mucosal immunity. 2) Plasmacytoid dendritic cells in host defense and autoimmunity.
3) Innate immunoreceptors in Alzheimer’s disease.

Radboud UMC, Netherlands

Professor Jolanda de Vries is chair of the Department of Tumor Immunology at the Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences. She was one of the pioneers to translate dendritic cell biology into potential clinical applications. The first clinical phase I/II studies in which patients were vaccinated with DCs loaded with tumour-specific peptides were initiated in 1997. She also developed a novel immuno-monitoring assay that is highly predictive for extended survival after vaccination with DCs. Her primary scientific interest continues along the line of DC-immunotherapy and in particular the migration and imaging of DC. For example, in-vivo imaging of ex-vivo labelled cells using MRI. New opportunities for other cell-types (e.g. subsets of DCs) are now being developed.

Genentech, USA

Lélia Delamarre is a Senior Scientist in the Cancer Immunology Department at Genentech. The focus of her group is to understand how the modulation of dendritic cell and T cell functions can enhance tumor-specific T cell responses. Her lab also concentrates on the identification of the tumor antigens that drive T cell responses with the goal of further characterizing T cell responses in cancer patients and develop personalized immunotherapies against cancer. Lélia obtained a PhD in Virology from Pierre and Marie Curie University in France and then, completed a postdoctoral training at Yale University, where she studied the cell biology of antigen presentation in dendritic cells. 

University of Erlangen, Germany

Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN)
Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore

Florent Ginhoux graduated in Biochemistry from the University Pierre et Marie CURIE (UPMC), Paris VI, obtained a Masters degree in Immunology from the Pasteur Institute in 2000 and his PhD in 2004 from UPMC, Paris VI. As a postdoctoral fellow, he joined the Laboratory of Miriam Merad in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM), New York. In 2008, he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Gene and Cell Medicine, MSSM and member of the Immunology Institute of MSSM. He joined the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), A*STAR in May 2009 as a Junior Principal Investigator. He is now a Senior Principal Investigator, an EMBO Young Investigator and a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher since 2016. He is also an Adjunct Visiting Associate Professor in the Shanghai Immunology Institute, Jiao Tong University, in Shanghai, China since 2015. Both laboratories are focusing on the ontogeny and differentiation of macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs), in both humans and mice.

CIML Immunology, France

Session Title: Dermal cDC1 in Health and Disease

Session Topic: Among the different dendritic cell subsets present in the skin, cDC1 are the less numerous and still they harbor unique and fascinating functions. We generated a mouse model to study their functions in vivo and showed their unique features in tumor immunity and peripheral tolerance.

Sandrine Henri did her PhD on Immunology at the Faculty of Medecine La Timone (Marseille, France) aiming to understand the immune mechanisms of susceptibility or resistance to Symmers fibrosis in patients infected by Schistosoma mansoni. Then she was post-doctoral fellow at the Walter Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI, Melbourne, Australia) where she contributed to the characterization of dendritic cell subsets in skin and cutaneous lymph nodes and studied DC interaction with Leishmania major. Since her return to France, she joined the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy (CIML, Marseille, France) where as tenure scientist she made major contributions to decipher dendritic cell and macrophage subsets within peripheral tissues (ie skin, gut & prostate) and to the understanding of their origins and functions

For the past 25 years, Matthew Krummel, PhD, has studied mechanisms that regulate the immune system, using cutting-edge technologies. Dr. Krummel is a professor at UCSF where his research focuses on the spatial and temporal dynamics of immune systems. Current studies include the definition of cDC1 as primary centerpieces of reactive immune systems in cancer through to discoveries of archetypal states of immune systems across the body. High-resolution and high-dimensional microscopy—from cell motility and synapses, through to multicellular dynamics—have been and remain focal points (pun intended) of his research.

Dr. Krummel also drives collaborative science: he founded a microscopy ‘collaboratory’ which unites ‘shared’ technical personnel, he developed a novel industry consortium-funded project (Immunoprofiler.org) which united studies of 15 cancer types and a spectrum of autoimmune diseases to understand the biology of individual patients Together with other UCSF faculty founded the ImmunoX initiative, a radical collaboration platform focused on methods and data sharing as a means to accelerate discovery and cures.

Dr. Krummel’s work has led to numerous clinical advances starting with his PhD thesis in which he made, characterized and proved the first anti-CTLA-4 ‘checkpoint blockade’ therapeutic antibodies (now over 100,000 patients treated) through to new next-generation therapies taking place at Pionyr Immunotherapeutics and Foundery Innovations–biotechnology companies that he co-founded. The aim of all of his research is to understand and apply the immune system to improve human health.

University of California, San Francisco, USA

University of Bonn, Germany

Christian Kurts received his medical doctorate in 1991 from Göttingen University, Germany. He trained at Hannover and Aachen University clinic and was granted board certifications in internal medicine and nephrology. From 1995 until 1998, he worked with Profs. Miller, Carbone and Heath at the WEHI in Melbourne, where he defined antigen cross-presentation and studied its role in autoimmunity. In 2003, he was appointed tenured Professor at the University of Bonn, Germany, and in 2009 he became director of the Institute of Experimental Immunology in Bonn. He received a Heisenberg fellowship and the Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Prize from the German Research Foundation and was elected in 2014 into the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He coordinates an international PhD and scientific exchange program between Bonn and Melbourne Universities. His research is focused at kidney dendritic cells, antigen presentation and on the mechanisms underlying various types of immune-mediated diseases.

Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Assoc. Prof. Lahoud completed her PhD at Monash University, where she focussed on identification and functional analysis of novel DNA binding proteins. She then applied her molecular expertise to the molecular analysis of dendritic cell (DC) subsets at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Assoc. Prof. Lahoud’s research focussed on the identification of DC-surface molecules that underpin DC function in mouse and human, and as DC targets for immune modulation. Her discoveries of DC receptors and their ligands have enhanced the understanding of DC subsets and their functions, and have revealed damage recognition pathways integral for immune responses. She has applied this knowledge of DC receptors and their functions for the development of a platform to modulate immune responses.

Assoc. Prof Lahoud now heads a research team at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University. Her research focusses on Dendritic Cell Receptors, their role in damage and pathogen recognition, and their application for vaccines and immune modulation.

Suzhou Institute of Systems Medicine, China

Yuting MA focuses on dissecting how cellular and mental stress responses modulate immune-related disorders, especially cancer. With the approaches of systems medicine, she is exploring: 1) cytotoxic agent-induced alternations in tumor and immune cells at the levels of gene transcription, post-transcriptional modification and metabolism, which affect tumor immunogenicity and anti-tumor immunity; 2) mental stress-related changes in neuroendocrine mediators and metabolites from host cells and microbiota, which can be sensed by immune cells to regulate the pathological outcome. Her publications in the field of tumor immunology reached >3900 citations in total. Yuting received her PhD degree in Immunology from Université Paris sud 11, followed by post-doc trainings in Institut Gustave Roussy (INSERM U848) and Université Paris Descartes (Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers), France. She is now a professor and a lab director in Suzhou Institute of Systems Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. She received Chinese Young Women Scientists Awards in 2019.

Walter & Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia

Stephen Nutt is a laboratory head at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and a Professor at the University of Melbourne. His research goal is to decipher the regulatory logic used by immune cells in making cell fate decisions and particularly how a select group of transcription factors act as the master regulators to program the immune response. A particular interest is to understand the transcriptional program that enables lymphocytes and dendritic cells to diversify into the many well-known functional subsets essential for protective immunity. He completed his PhD research at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna Austria, and after post-doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge returned to Australia to establish his research program focussing on lymphocyte differentiation. In 2016, he was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and is a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow.

Session Topic: The maternal microbiome regulates respiratory disease susceptibility in the offspring via effects on neonatal DC haematopoiesis

Simon Phipps undertook his PhD thesis at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London before postdoctoral fellowships at The John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University and then the University of Newcastle. In 2010, he moved to The University of Queensland to set up an independent research laboratory, then sever years later, joined QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute to head the Respiratory Immunology group. His research program simulates important gene-environment interactions that underpin the association between severe viral bronchiolitis in infancy and the subsequent development of childhood asthma. His laboratory has found that perturbations to plasmacytoid DC development or function predisposes to both diseases by affecting antiviral immunity, and more importantly, regulatory T cell differentiation. He was recently awarded the Klosterfrau Award in recognition of his work in the field of paediatric pulmonology.

QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia

Caetano Reis e Sousa obtained a BSc from Imperial College in 1989 and a DPhil from Oxford in 1992. After a postdoc at NIH, he set up his lab in 1998 at the ICRF, later to become CRUK’s London Research Institute and now subsumed into The Francis Crick Institute.

Caetano’s research centres on the mechanisms involved in sensing infection, cancer and tissue injury. He has helped to define the cells and pathways involved in innate immune detection of RNA viruses, fungi and dead cells. He was elected a member of EMBO in 2006, a fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences in the same year and made an Officer of the Order of Sant’Iago da Espada by his native Portugal in 2009. He is a recipient of numerous awards, including the 2017 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. Caetano is currently an Assistant Research Director and Senior Group Leader at the Crick where he heads the Immunobiology Laboratory. He is also Professor of Immunology at Imperial College and honorary professor at UCL and King’s College London.

NYU Langone Health, USA

Boris did his Ph.D. thesis research in immunology with Irun R. Cohen at the Weizmann Institute, and trained as a postdoc with Philip Leder at Harvard Medical School. In 2003 he started his lab at Columbia University, where he became a professor in 2014. In 2015 he joined New York University School of Medicine (NYUSoM) as a professor in the departments of Pathology and Medicine. Boris is the director of NYUSoM Immunology and Inflammation Training program and the co-Director of the Colton Center for Autoimmunity. The Reizis lab has been broadly interested in hematopoiesis, differentiation and function of dendritic cells, and mechanisms of autoimmunity.

Barbara obtained her degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from Texas Tech University in 2003. During her undergraduate studies she worked as a HHMI Undergraduate Research Fellow in the lab of Brian Reilly. Barbara then went  to Washington University in St. Louis for her PhD studies, where  she worked on the transcriptional regulation of T cell differentiation in the lab of Ken Murphy. In 2009 she joined the group of Caetano Reis e Sousa at the London Research Institute and received an EMBO long term fellowship to study dendritic cell biology. In 2014, funded by the Emmy-Noether programme of the German Research Foundation, Barbara established her research group in Munich, where she continues to study the functions of dendritic cells in immunity. In 2016 Barbara was awarded and ERC Starting Grant and has received a Tenure Track Professorship at the LMU in 2017.

Institute Curie, France

Session Topic: Molecular mechanisms of monocyte differentiation into dendritic cells versus macrophages

Elodie Segura received a Ph.D. in Immunology in 2006 for her work on dendritic cell-derived exosomes, carried out at the Institut Curie in Paris (France) under the supervision of Clotilde Théry. Elodie Segura was then a postdoctoral fellow in José Villadangos’ laboratory at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne (Australia), working on the mechanisms of cross-presentation in murine dendritic cells. In 2010, she returned to Institut Curie in Paris (France) to undertake the analysis of human dendritic cell subsets in the laboratory of Sebastian Amigorena. Since 2013, she is a Principal Investigator within the “Immunity and Cancer” department at Institut Curie. Her work focuses on the biology of human antigen-presenting cells in health and disease. Elodie Segura is the current president of the French Dendritic Cell Society, and an Associate Editor at Frontiers in Immunology (section Antigen Presenting Cell Biology).

National Institutes of Health, USA

Roxane Tussiwand graduated in 2002 with a degree in biology from the University of Milan, where she worked on the prenatal origin of childhood leukemia. In 2006 she obtained an international PhD in molecular medicine sponsored by the Italian government at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona, Switzerland, working on dendritic cell development. From 2006 to 2010 she worked on early hematopoietic development as postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of A. Rolink at the University of Basel. In 2010 she joined the group of Ken Murphy, Washington University in St. Louis, USA, working on the transcriptional regulation of dendritic cell development. In October 2014 she was appointed as Swiss National Science Foundation Professor at the University of Basel. In February 2019 she was recruited at the NIDCR/NIH through the Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator program. In 2016 she received the G.Thorbecke Award from the Society for leukocyte biology. Her research focuses on the transcriptional regulation of hematopoietic cells commitment and on dendritic cell biology.