Gastvorlesung / Guest lecture Prof. Dirk WERLING

Prof. Dirk WERLING
Dr. MedVet PhD MRCVS
Professor of Molecular Immunology
Department of Pathobiology and Population Sciences
RVC Royal Veterinary College
University of London

Thema
“Immune response to parasitic helminths in ruminants“

Prof. Dirk WERLING gained his veterinary degree at the Veterinary University Hannover. After he finished, he moved to Switzerland where he received his doctor degree at the ETH Zuerich. He examined the impact of Bovine Leukaemia Virus infection on the ability of bovine macrophages to respond to LPS. He received multiple grants for his research (Swiss National Science Foundation, German Research Foundation). This was followed by a Marie Curie Research Fellowship of the EU to join the group of Chris Howard at the Institute for Animal Health to work on the development and characterisation of dendritic cells and their role in respiratory syncytial virus infection. He moved back to the ETH Zuerich as a Senior Scientist. During this period he expanded the scope of his work to encompass the development of the innate immune system in ruminants, and aspect of pathogen escape mechanisms in innate immune cells. In 2001, he accepted an Assistant Professorship at the Institute of Virology (University of Berne), in the group of Thomas Jungi. In 2003, he accepted a Senior Lectureship at the Royal Veterinary College, and was promoted to a personal tenured Chair and Professor in Molecular Immunology in 2007. His research have attracted substantial funding and resulted in the submission of 3 different patent-applications. His current research is funded through BBSRC, EU (FP7 and EMIDA) as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His current main research interest is the ontogeny of the innate immune system between species, the importance of SNP in innate immune receptors for ligand binding, and how we can use our knowledge regarding the innate immune system to design new/optimise existing vaccine strategies. Here, we are concentrating more on carbohydrate recogntion and carbohydrate-based vaccines.

Einladung