Johannes Stöckl and Otto Majdic

The central research interest of our group is a better understanding of regulatory mechanisms between the innate and adaptive immune system. Our group has longstanding experience in the molecular and functional analysis of cells of the human phagocyte lineage, in particular dendritic cells (DCs). It is our long-term goal to learn how phagocyte development and function is regulated by exogenous (pathogen) and endogenous (inflammatory) danger signals and to characterize novel and functional relevant receptors on DCs and T cells via which adaptive immunity can be tuned. In order to find such regulatory mechanisms we utilize commensal pathogens as pathfinders. Commensal microbes such as human rhinoviruses or the fungus Candida albicans are typically harmless for most healthy individuals. Thus, the strategies used by the host to limit infectivity are necessarily efficient and, in return, such microbes have developed their own elaborate tactics to circumvent these defense mechanisms. By decoding these tricks we want to find new routes to modulate immune responses in humans.

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