The fundamental role of Dendritic Cells is to screen tissues for pathogens. However, it is becoming more an more clear that they also take up signals from the local microenvironment and integrate these cues. We could show that these signals lead to local Dendritic cell differentiation and functionalization even in the absence of DC activation, suggesting that these populations perform an important auxillary role in the local niche. Our goal is to identify more and more of these local DC populations, leveraging our expertise in 30-color flow cytometry, single-cell sequencing and multiplex imaging and to understand how they contribute to local tissue maintanence. We are also interested in determining how skin inflammation, infection and cancer change the profile of these dendritic cells, perturb the microenvironment and lead to chronic or detrimental immunity. Furthermore, we believe that local infection/inflammation also affects Dendritic cells systemically and are actively investigating if Dendritic cell output or differentiation can be influenced within the bone marrow.​

As part of the University Medical Center Mainz, the Research Center for Immunotherapy (FZI), the Center for Healthy Ageing (CHA) and the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences (IQCB) we want to develop novel treatment options to influence the local microenvironment and return it to homeostasis breaking chronic inflammatory cycles in skin inflammation and autoimmune disease.