Burkhard Ludewig
"Lymphoid organ fibroblast control immune cell activation and differentiation"
Lecture
Fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs) are specialized fibroblasts of secondary lymphoid organs that provide the structural foundation of the tissue. Moreover, FRCs guide immune cells to dedicated microenvironmental niches, where they provide homeostatic growth and differentiation factors to lymphocytes and myeloid cells. Inflammatory processes including infection with pathogens, induce rapid morphological and functional adaptations that are critical for the induction and regulation of protective immune responses. In this seminar, I will present recent findings on molecular pathways that regulate FRC-immune cell crosstalk. In addition, I will discuss how FRCs integrate immune cell-derived signals to ensure protective immunity during infection and how therapies for inflammatory diseases and cancer can be developed through improved understanding of FRC-immune cell interactions.
Biography
Burkhard Ludewig is currently acting as the head of the Medical Research Center and the Institute of Immunobiology at the Kantonsspital St. Gallen, Switzerland. His research interests are focused on the interaction of viruses with the innate and adaptive immune system. Furthermore, his laboratory has established transgenic mouse model for in vivo stromal cell targeting.
He is affiliated with the Life Science Faculty of the University of Zürich and serves as an affiliated PI of the Zurich Life Science Graduate School. Further academic activities include teaching of biology students of the ETH Zürich and the University of Zürich in immunology, and supervising PhD students from the Life Science Zürich Graduate School.
Professor Ludewig graduated in 1992 at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the Free University (FU) Berlin, Germany, and received a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine in 1995 at the FU Berlin following a three year experimental work at the Robert-Koch Institute, Berlin. Following two short postdoctoral positions at the Robert-Koch Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he joined the Institute of Experimental Immunology at the University of Zürich in 1997 as a recipient of the postdoctoral fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 2002, Prof. Ludewig accepted the position as head of the Institute of Immunobiology at the Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen in Eastern Switzerland.
He currently serves as a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Immunology and the European Journal of Immunology.
https://forschung.kssg.ch/en/profiles/5-burkhard-ludewig/publications
15 Aug 2023