SPEAKERS

Luigi Notarangelo

Chief, Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, USA

Dr. Notarangelo is Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He received his Medical Degree from the University of Pavia, Italy, where he completed residency in Pediatrics and fellowships in Allergy/Immunology and Human Genetics. He was appointed Chair of Pediatrics at the University of Brescia (Italy) and Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He has authored more than 530 scientific publications. His primary interests are the characterization of the cellular and molecular bases of inborn errors of immunity, and development of novel therapeutic approaches for those disorders. He has served as President of the European Society for Immune Deficiencies and of the Clinical Immunological Society, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Onur Boyman

Professor and Chair of Clinical Immunology and Allergology, University of Zurich, and Director, Department of Immunology, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland

After obtaining his M.D. degree from the University of Zurich, Onur Boyman trained in allergology, immunology, and internal medicine in La Jolla (California, USA), Lausanne, Istanbul, and Zurich. Since 2014, he has been Professor and Chair of Clinical Immunology and Allergology at the University of Zurich and Director of the Department of Immunology at University Hospital Zurich. Research in his laboratory focuses on the biology of different cytokines in homeostasis, pathology and immunotherapy, as illustrated by the discovery and development of biased interleukin-2 for the treatment of cancer and autoimmunity. He has published numerous articles, including in Cell, Immunity, Nature, PNAS, Science, and Science Translational Medicine. His research has resulted in investigator-initiated clinical trials, in several patents, and two start-up companies. He has received several awards, including the Pfizer Research Prize, the Gold Prize of LEO Pharma Research Foundation, and the Goetz Prize.

Christian Münz

Professor and Co-Director of the Institute of Experimental Immunology at the University of Zürich, Switzerland

Christian Münz has been trained in immunology at the German Cancer Research Institute in Heidelberg, Germany, the University of Tübingen, Germany, and the Rockefeller University in New York, USA. He became Assistant Professor and Head of Laboratory at the Rockefeller University in 2003. In 2008 he was recruited as Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Institute of Experimental Immunology to the University of Zürich, Switzerland, and became Full Professor in 2015. Since 2010 he is also Visiting Professor at the Imperial College in London, UK. In 2006 he received the Burroughs Welcome Fund Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award for his studies on antigen processing via macroautophagy, and in 2012 the Sobek Award for his studies on the association of Epstein Barr virus (EBV) infection with multiple sclerosis (MS). He is an expert in EBV specific immune control and humanized mice as preclinical models for human oncogenic gamma-herpesvirus infections, and has published more than 280 peer reviewed papers and review articles on these topics.

Sandra Ammann

Post-doc at Universitätklinikum Freiburg, Germany

Dr. Ammann research focuses on primary immunodeficiencies; mainly in genetic disorders of lymphocyte cytotoxicity. She explores the generation, transport and exocytosis of intracellular vesicles by T cells and employs functional analyses of human samples and mouse-models of hemophagocytic lymphohistocytosis (HLH). She earned her PhD in the lab of S. Ehl, University Freiburg, studying HLH, a rare disorder of life-threatening hyperinflammation, frequently caused by genetic defects of cytotoxicity. Dr. Ammann then joined the lab of G. Griffiths at University of Cambridge, UK, where she deepened her knowledge about the cell biological basis of cytotoxicity. She currently works at the Institute for Immunodeficiency in Freiburg (with P. Aichele) on mouse models of HLH, studying immunopathology, cell interactions and treatment possibilities.

Dr. Ammann received the API prize 2021 for her work on functional flow cytometry of monocytes for routine diagnosis of innate primary immunodeficiencies, published 2019 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. In addition to their diagnostic utility, these assays are of key importance in defining the functional effects of genetic variants.

Fabio Candotti

Assoc. Prof. of Medicine, Head Physician, Division of Immunology and Allergy, Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland

Fabio Candotti has a long-standing interest in defining the cellular and molecular bases of immunodeficiency diseases and in the development of new therapeutic approaches for these disorders.  Through research and clinical activity in this field, he contributed to the discovery of the genes responsible for immunodeficiencies and to define important clinical features of these disorders with particular interest to the Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS) and adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID).  In addition, his laboratory has developed Moloney virus- and HIV-based gene correction strategies for X-linked SCID, ADA-SCID, WAS, and IL12Rb1 deficiency that were tested in vitro and in mouse models. Since his joining the Lausanne University Hospital in 2014, he has been responsible for the clinical implementation of vaccine trials at its Vaccinology and Immunotherapy Center including protocols from the HVTN network. His laboratory currently develops gene editing strategies based on CRISPR/Cas-9-mediated approaches to correct models of immunodeficiency that can be applied also to strategies against HIV infection.

Arjan C Lankester

Professor of Pediatrics and Stem Cell Transplantation, Willem-Alexander Children’s Hospital, Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands

After obtaining his M.D. from the University of Leiden and a PhD on B cell receptor signaling from the University of Amsterdam, he was trained as pediatrician-immunologist at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). Since 2009 he is clinical director of the JACIE-accredited Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation program which serves as the national center for stem cell therapy in patients with inherited immune disorders. In 2016 he was appointed as professor of Pediatrics and Stem Cell Transplantation at the University of Leiden. He is heading the LUMC expert center on inherited immune disorders and stem cell transplantation (SCT) which is full member of ERN-RITA. His primary research interest is to improve efficacy and safety of stem cell therapy with particular focus on optimizing conditioning regimens and immune reconstitution after SCT. He has conducted and coordinated many single and multicenter studies including investigator-initiated adoptive cellular therapy trials. He is the past chair of Inborn Errors Working Party of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation and European Society for Immune Deficiencies.

Reinhard Seger

Emeritus Professor, Chair of Paediatric Immunology/BMT at University

Children`s Hospital of Zürich, Switzerland

After an MSc in Exp.Immunology at Univ. of Birmingham/UK  Dr. Seger completed a residency in Paediatrics at Kinderspital Zürich and two postdoctoral fellowships in Paed.Immunology/BMT at Hopital Necker- Enfants Malades in Paris/France and at Duke Univ. Medical Center in Durham/USA. His research focused on submyeloablative HSCT strategies and on HSC gene therapy for chronic granulomatous disease. His group initiated a new protocol of reduced intensity conditioning (RIC) for BMT in CGD patients (Güngör T et al, Lancet 2014) and achieved the first engraftment of gene therapy for paediatric CGD using RIC and a gammaretroviral vector, together with Dr.M.Grez (Ott M et al, Nat.Med 2006). After retirement in 2013 Dr. Seger has been teaching in the field of Paed.Immunology in two Children`s Hospitals in Cambodia and in PID training courses in SE-Asia.

Mathias Hauri-Hohl

Senior Physician, Department of Stem Cell Transplantation at University Children`s Hospital of Zürich, Switzerland

Mathias Hauri-Hohl, MD PhD, board-certified pediatrician, is senior transplant physician in the department of stem cell transplantation at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich and head of the cell collection facility and the laboratory for stem cells and cellular therapies.

He has a long-standing interest in thymus biology with a particular focus on developmental and functional aspects of thymic epithelial cells in murine models and more recently has shifted his focus on human thymus biology. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Steven Ziegler at the Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle, assessing the contribution of thymic medullary epithelial cells on thymocyte maturation. His current research is focused on the study of lymphostromal interactions in the human thymus as well as immune reconstitution after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.