PROJECT
SUPERVISORS

Project Supervisor

Bodo Grimbacher

Background

Prof. Bodo Grimbacher is a physician scientist and the Vice-Director of the Institute for Immunodeficiency at the University Hospital Freiburg. Additionally, he is an honorary consultant for the Department of Immunology at the Royal Free Hospital, University College London, where until 2011, when he returned to work in Freiburg, Germany, he was an EU-Marie-Curie team leader.

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Previously, he was lecturer and senior scientist at the Department of Clinical Immunology, Freiburg, Germany. He completed his postdoc at the NIH, National Human Genome Institute. Amongst his awards and honors, he was granted the Emmy-Noether Fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Marie-Curie Excellence Grant of the European Commission, the Georges Köhler Award of the German Immunology Society (DGfI), the Richard Farr Memorial Lectureship at AAAAI, the Rudolf-Schoen Prize from the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, and the Thieme prize from the Leopoldina, the German Research Society. In 2004 Prof. Bodo Grimbacher has set up the ESID registry, an internet-based patient and research database for over 200 different primary immunodeficiencies which was supported and sponsored by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Program. From 2006 to 2010, he was the secretary of the European Society for Immunodeficiencies. Pof. Grimbacher is a current member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the DADA2 Foundation, of the Scientific Advisory Board of the ACHSE e.V., he is CO-Speaker of the E-Rare Disease Network iPAD (EU), speaker of the German Rare Disease Network GAIN (BMBF), speaker of the Translational School of Immunology (DGfI), and speaker of the Arbeitskreis Klinische Immunologie (DGfI).

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Research

As a group, we are fascinated about how immune cells acquire a high diversity of functions in association with vast changes in their epigenetic profiles. We want to know how epigenetic regulation is related to immune cell function and the mechanisms that participate in the establishment of epigenetic profiles in immune cells, and how the genetic information is used and interpreted.

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In addition, we also want to understand how epigenetic profiles in immune cells become altered in different immune-mediated diseases, particularly in autoimmune diseases and in primary immunodeficiencies. This is important in conditions with defined mutations, in others that depend on the contributions of many different genetic variants and in those in which the genetic contribution remains elusive. We believe that a better understanding of what happens in these diseases will allow us to find interventions and improve current therapies.

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Publications

Rauer, S., Marks, R., Urbach, H., Warnatz, K., Nath, A., Holland, S.,…Grimbacher, B. (2019). Treatment of Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy with Pembrolizumab.
N Engl J Med, 380(17), 1676-1677. (letter). doi: 10.1056/NEJMc1817193

Frey-Jakobs, S., Hartberger, JM., Fliegauf, M., Bossen, C., Wehmeyer, ML., Neubauer, JC.,… Grimbacher, B. (2018). ZNF341 controls STAT3 expression and thereby immunocompetence.
Sci Immunol, 3(24), eaat4941. doi: 10.1126/sciimmunol.aat4941

Fliegauf, M., Bryant, VL., Frede, N., Slade, C., Woon, ST., Lehnert, K.,…Grimbacher, B. (2015). Haploinsufficiency of the NF-κB1 Subunit p50 in Common Variable Immunodeficiency.
Am J Hum Genet, 97(3), 389-403. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.07.008

Schubert, D., Bode, C., Kenefeck, R., Hou, TZ., Wing, JB., Kennedy, A.,…Grimbacher, B*. (2014). Autosomal dominant immune dysregulation syndrome in humans with CTLA4 mutations.
Nat Med, 20(12), 1410-6. doi: 10.1038/nm.3746

Glocker, EO., Kotlarz, D., Boztug, K., Gertz, EM., Schäffer, AA., Noyan, F.,…Grimbacher, B, Klein, C. (2009). Inflammatory bowel disease and mutations affecting the interleukin-10 receptor.
N Engl J Med, 361(21), 2033-2045. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa090720