Marc Veldhoen

Marc Veldhoen
Instituto de Medicina Molecular (iMM), Lisbon
Project Leader

Enhancing tissue resident immunity.

We were able to show that Tissue resident memory T (Trm) cells are generated with the help of regulatory T (Treg) cells. They achieve this by being recruited to the site of infection and secreting and activating the cytokine TGFb (Ferreira et al., Nat. Immunol. 2020). Follow up work could dissect that the recruitment of the type of Treg cells is infection dependent. Immunity against intracellular pathogens ( type-1) require type-1 Treg cells for efficient Trm development, while immunity against helminths ( type-2) do not result in Trm cell development. Lastly, immunity against extracellular pathogens ( type-3) does in part require type-3 Treg cells for efficient Trm development, however, there is redundancy in the system (Barros et al, Nat. Comm, 2023 resubmitted).

Trm cell activity can further be regulated by the local availability of metabolites, especially sugars (Konjar et al. PNAS 2022).

Since 2016 Marc Veldhoen is an ERA Chair at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Lisbon, with a focus on mucosal T cell biology, and Professor of Basic Immunology at the Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Medicina. He previously started his own group in Cambridge on the same topic. He has a MSc in Medical Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Utrecht and a PhD in Immunology obtained at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), London. He did his post-doc at NIMR, working on T helper cell differentiation. Veldhoen has published over 100 articles in journals, with over 22.000 citations including in Nature, Science and Cell. He has received different awards. He reviews for many journals and grant funding bodies and serves on the editorial board of European journal of Immunology, International Immunology and Frontiers Immunology and is the Editor-in-Chief for Immunity, Inflammation and Disease. (Read full CV).

The Veldhoen-lab has a keen interest in T cell biology, from their development in the thymus, their maintenance and activation in the periphery, their differentiation into effector cells with specialized functions as well as their development into memory T cells, their maintenance and activation, including their metabolism.

Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes
Edifício Egas Moniz
Avenida Professor Egas Moniz
1649-028 Lisboa, Portugal
Tel.: (+351) 217 999 411

Email: [email protected]