Nicole Joller

Joller lab on twitter

Our understanding of host-pathogen interaction is primarily derived from studying how the immune system protects us from a single pathogen. In contrast, it is largely unknown how this response alters the body’s ability to respond to a second infectious agent or the susceptibility to autoimmunity or cancer. Our goal is to investigate the long-term effects of pathogenic challenges on future responses. Currently, we are focusing on changes in the regulatory compartment of the adaptive immune system. 

Specifically we aim to:

1. Analyze how regulatory T cell (Treg) function and the composition of the Treg compartment are affected by different types of infections;
2. Determine how alterations in the Treg compartment affect susceptibility to infections and autoimmunity;
3. Investigate how previous infections affect the susceptibility to an unrelated secondary challenge (read our recent review);
4. Investigate how co-inhibitory receptors affect immune control of pathogens.

To achieve this goal we use a wide variety of techniques including:
transcriptomics, high dimensional flow cytometry, in vitro and in vivo immunological assays, animal models (infectious and autoimmune).