Dr. Andreas Tiffeau-Mayer leads the Quantitative Immunology Lab at University College London (UCL). His research aims to quantitatively describe adaptive immune responses across a range of time and length scales, from the molecular rules governing receptor–ligand interactions to the ecological and evolutionary dynamics shaping immune repertoires. By interrogating repertoire sequencing data with information theory and machine learning, his work has uncovered, for example, how early-life dynamics leave lasting imprints on the immune repertoire, and how T cell receptor sequence features synergistically determine antigen specificity. Before joining UCL, Andreas was a Lewis-Sigler Fellow at Princeton University, following his training in statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics in Göttingen and Paris.
Prof. Hans J. Stauss is the Director of the UCL Institute of Immunity & Transplantation. He received his Doctor of Medicine from Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago. The main focus of his research is the analysis of antigen-specific T lymphocyte responses and the development of immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer, chronic infection, and autoimmune conditions. In order to generate therapeutic T cells of desired specificity, his group has been amongst the pioneering labs developing TCR gene therapy using conventional and regulatory T cells. His group has developed strategies to improve the expression and function of therapeutic TCR and used animal models to test the efficacy in vivo. His current interest remains the molecular and cellular analysis of engineered T cells and the development of novel T cell therapies for the treatment of cancer. He is also interested in using genetic engineering to regulate the metabolic activity of gene modified T cells, with the goal to enhance effector T cell differentiation and memory formation in vivo. His group uses the CRISPR technology to perform targeted gene editing to disrupt genes that might impair the function of therapeutic T cells. His particular interest is the development TCR and CAR gene transfer into regulatory T cells to achieve antigen-specific immune suppression for the treatment of transplant rejection and autoimmune conditions.
