Postdoctoral position in germinal center biology

Apply now for this exciting opportunity in germinal center biology. You will work on the project outlined below.

Elucidating the Impact of Innate Immune Stimulation on Follicular Dendritic Cells (FDCs) in Human Germinal Centers.

Understanding the biology of FDCs is essential to develop more effective vaccines and adjuvant systems. FDCs are a unique type of immune cell found in lymphoid follicles whose primary role is to capture, retain and display antigen to support B cell responses. FDC activation is as such essential for the induction of efficient, persistent vaccine immune responses. Recently, we demonstrated that FDCs can sense the environment by the expression of pattern recognition receptors. Pattern recognition receptors are the classical targets for adjuvants and new adjuvant combinations could be developed to optimally trigger FDC mediated B-cell activation. The overall objective of this project is to appraise the role of innate immune stimulation on the capacity of human FDC to support high quality B-cell responses.

The project will include:

• Optimized FDC isolation protocol & antigen presentation including scale up. These could be the starting point for the development of complex in vitro models for in mid to high throughput screenings of compounds.
• Library Creation: Develop a comprehensive library of potential agonists.
• Scientific publications
• High dimensional datasets of huFDC modulation, which could be mined in the context of project related to vaccines and autoimmune diseases.