Publications related to Prof. Ablasser Group

The conceptual foundations of innate immunity: Taking stock 30 years later

While largely neglected over decades during which adaptive immunity captured most of the attention, innate immune mechanisms have now become central to our understanding of immunology. Innate immunity provides the first barrier to infection in vertebrates, ...

2024

Exploration and modulation of mechanical cues for enhanced cancer immunotherapy

Armand Kurum

The advent of immunotherapy, such as immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) and adoptive transfer of cytotoxic lymphocytes, has transformed the clinical care of cancer. However, a significant proportion of patients are resistant to immunotherapy or experience re ...

EPFL2024

A common NFKB1 variant detected through antibody analysis in UK Biobank predicts risk of infection and allergy

Jacques Fellay, Flavia Aurelia Shoko Hodel

Infectious agents contribute significantly to the global burden of diseases through both acute infection and their chronic sequelae. We leveraged the UK Biobank to identify genetic loci that influence humoral immune response to multiple infections. From 45 ...

2024

Single-cell analysis of the interactions between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and macrophages

Ophélie Rutschmann

Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is a highly effective pathogen infecting nearly a third of the world's population. An M. tuberculosis infection starts when droplets containing bacteria enter an individual's lungs. The first host cells to contact the bacteria ar ...

EPFL2024

A Cluster of Evolutionarily Recent KRAB Zinc Finger Proteins Protects Cancer Cells from Replicative Stress–Induced Inflammation

Didier Trono, Priscilla Turelli, Sandra Eloise Kjeldsen, Evaristo Jose Planet Letschert, Filipe Amândio Brandão Sanches Vong Martins, Florian Huber, Cyril David Son-Tuyên Pulver, Olga Marie Louise Rosspopoff, Romain Forey, Joana Carlevaro Fita

Heterochromatin loss and genetic instability enhance cancer progression by favoring clonal diversity, yet uncontrolled replicative stress leads to mitotic catastrophe and inflammatory responses that promote immune rejection. KRAB domain-containing zinc fin ...

2024

Accessible and highly observable gastrointestinal organoid model systems for studying host-pathogen interactions

Moritz Hofer

Traditional cell cultures have long been fundamental to biological research, offering an alternative to animal models burdened by ethical constraints and procedural intricacies, often lacking relevance to human physiology and disease. Moreover, their inabi ...

EPFL2024

Alpha1-antitrypsin improves survival in murine abdominal sepsis model by decreasing inflammation and sequestration of free heme

Florian Maria Wurm

Background Excessive inflammation, hemolysis, and accumulation of labile heme play an essential role in the pathophysiology of multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) in sepsis. Alpha1-antitrypsin (AAT), an acute phase protein with heme binding capacity, i ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

Mechanisms and functions of protein S-acylation

Françoise Gisou van der Goot Grunberg, Laurence Gouzi Abrami, Francisco De Magalhães Sarmento R De Mesquita

Over the past two decades, protein S-acylation (often referred to as S-palmitoylation) has emerged as an important regulator of vital signalling pathways. S-Acylation is a reversible post-translational modification that involves the attachment of a fatty a ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Exploring the role of cGAS-STING-mediated inflammation in age-associated neurodegeneration and antitumor immunity

Natasha Ella Samson

Inflammation stands as a dynamic and intricate biological process, promoting vital defence mechanisms against harmful stimuli, including infections and injuries, to drive pathogen clearance and healing. On one hand, these responses can manifest acutely and ...

EPFL2024

Development of a novel Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) for its use in Natural Killer (NK) cells for cancer treatment and beyond

Angela Madurga Alonso

The use of CAR technologies has revolutionized cancer treatment. Their unprecedented efficacy against B cell malignancies has opened the doors for a lot of excitement and research in the field. These synthetic receptors are composed of an antigen recogniti ...

EPFL2023

Engineering Innate and Adaptive Immunity for Enhanced Cancer Immunotherapy

Min Gao

Cancer immunotherapy has become an attractive strategy among different therapeutic modalities over the past few years and has showed great success in the clinic. However, there are many outstanding challenges hindering the current immunotherapies. In my Ph ...

EPFL2023

Basic Mechanisms of Immunometabolites in Shaping the Immune Response

Alexander Hooftman

Background Innate immune cells play a crucial role in responding to microbial infections, but their improper activation can also drive inflammatory disease. For this reason, their activation state is governed by a multitude of factors, including the metabo ...

Karger2023

Unlocking Hidden Potential: Exploring the Complexities of Signaling in Immune Cell Activation to Optimize CAR Therapy

Mathieu Girardin

Chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) are synthetic, transmembrane proteins that trigger immune cell signaling following their engagement. They have been first utilized in T cells and later in natural killer (NK) cells to redirect their cytotoxicity toward a s ...

EPFL2023

Investigating the effect of inflammation on the progression of B-cell lymphoma dissemination in the sentinel lymph node

Daniel Molina Romero

Lymphomas are a group of heterogeneous blood cancers that arise from lymphocytes. The two primary clinical classifications of lymphomas are Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL), and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). In particular, B-cell lymphoma refers to the malignancies ...

EPFL2023

Functional characterization of Drosophila melanogaster immune effectors

Alexia Laurie Carboni

Drosophila melanogaster, commonly known as the "fruit fly", is a genetically tractable model organism widely used to study biological processes, notably the innate immune system. The advent of novel genome editing technologies, such as the CRISPR-Cas9 syst ...

EPFL2023

Exploring the interplay of molecular pattern and valency for selective interactions at the bio-interface

Kaltrina Paloja

Cell-cell communication is fundamental for immune balance. Multivalent interactions of surface receptors at immune interfaces drive specific communication, with stimulatory and inhibitory signals guiding the immune outcome. Notably, the valency, affinity, ...

EPFL2023

Tracking spatiotemporal localisation and interactions of the innate immune sensor STING

Sophie Marie Elisabeth Rivara

Innate immunity, the very first line of defence of our cells, relies on the detection of universal pathogen- or danger-associated signals to launch an inflammatory response. A crucial part of our innate immune system is based on the recognition of out-of-c ...

EPFL2023

Machine learning predictions of MHC-II specificities reveal alternative binding mode of class II epitopes

Florence Pojer, George Coukos, Kelvin Ka Ching Lau, Amédé Noredine Larabi, Julien Racle, David Gfeller, Philippe Guillaume Coune, Marta Andreia Da Silva Perez, Alexandre Harari

CD4+T cells orchestrate the adaptive immune response against pathogens and cancer by recognizing epitopes presented on class II major histocompatibility complex (MHC-II) molecules. The high polymorphism of MHC-II genes represents an important hurdle toward ...

CELL PRESS2023

Mechanism of KRAS-driven T cell infiltration in colorectal cancer

Amber Dawn Bowler

Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Early-stage disease can be detected with preventative medical screening and is treatable with surgical resection. Sixty-percent of patients, however, are diagnosed with advanced-stage ...

EPFL2023

Induction of a strong and long-lasting neutralizing immune response by dPreS1-TLR2 agonist nanovaccine against hepatitis B virus

Myriam Isabelle Lamrayah

Hepatitis B virus remains a major medical burden with more than 250 million chronically infected patients worldwide and 900,000 deaths each year, due to the disease progression towards severe complications (cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma). Despite the ...

ELSEVIER2023