Immune Regulation
Due to their physiological functions our mucosal surfaces are in direct contact to the environment and thus represent the major port of entry for pathogens. To protect the body from severe infections an effective mucosal immune system is indispensable. We are studying respiratory tract infections with the focus on influenza and pneumococci, which represent the most frequent viral and bacterial infectious agents for pneumonia in humans. A major focus of our research is to study molecular and cellular processes during coinfection with influenza and pneumococci and here in particular the immunological functions of the alveolar epithelium in host defense.
Leader
Prof Dunja Bruder
Immunology as a research field is close to life. It has a high relevance for everybody. And that is the reason why I am an immunologist.
Dunja Bruder studied biotechnology at the Technical University of Braunschweig and passed her diploma in 1996. She already showed a high interest in immunology during her studies and analyzed immune responses against bacterial toxins during her PhD thesis at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (1996-1999).
In the following years, Dunja Bruder worked as a postdoc in the junior group “Mucosal Immunity” and established upon others a transgenic mouse model for the investigation of T cell-mediated lung inflammation which she intensively used to study the immunological functions of alveolar epithelial cells.
During several scientific stays abroad, for example at the Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, she deepened her immunological knowledge and learned how to perform influenza A virus infection in mice. Her successful research activity was rewarded with the Young Investigator Award of the Society of Mucosal Immunology in 2005.
Since October 2006 Dunja Bruder leads the research group “Immune Regulation” at the HZI and was rewarded as the “Supervisor of the year 2008” for her exemplary education of PhD students. In December 2009 she completed her habilitation in immunology at the Hanover Medical School. Since August 2011 Dunja Bruder has a professorship for Infections Immunology at the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hospital Hygiene at the Otto-von-Guericke-University in Magdeburg and since this time she is leading research groups at both places. In 2014 she became advisory board member of the SFB 854 in frame of which researches from Magdeburg together with among others scientists from the HZI and the TU Braunschweig study the molecular organization of the communication within the immune system. Also since 2014 Dunja Bruder is the coordinator of the SFB 854 integrated graduate school MGK 854. Since 2017 she is spokesperson of Module 3 („Immunosenescence: Infection and immunity in the context of aging“) of the international graduate school ABINEP (Analysis, Imaging, and Modelling of Neuronal and Inflammatory Processes). Within this module clinicians of the University Hospital of the OVGU Magdeburg are working together with HZI scientists on translational projects in the area of infection research.
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