Our group focuses on diseases caused or maintained by alterations of the immune system, attempting to better understand their underlying mechanism to unlock new diagnosis and therapy monitoring strategies using in vivo models and advanced molecular imaging techniques such as combined positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. More specifically, we currently have 3 main areas of active research. First, infectious diseases, in particular fungal diseases such as invasive aspergillosis where we developed a novel specific diagnostic method that can be applied to therapy monitoring and will be extend to other fungal diseases. Second, the visualization of fibrosis in vivo and its interplay with the emergence of senescent cell subpopulations during disease progression, notably in pulmonary fibrosis and arthritis. There, we have shown the potential of radiotracers targeted towards the extra-cellular matrix for staging of fibrotic diseases. Lastly, we are investigating novel immunoregulatory interactions between macrophages and T-cells during cancer progression, hoping to unveil novel immunotherapeutic strategies, in collaboration with Stanford University. All of our research is strongly driven by unmet clinical needs and is performed with clinical translation being a focal end point.
phone: +49 7071 29 87511