B lymphocytes are key players of the immune response because they generate an extremely diverse repertoire of protective antibodies that recognize pathogens and foreign molecules with exquisite specificity. However, misregulation of B lymphocyte function can also associate with multiple health conditions, including immune deficiencies, autoimmunity and cancer.

Our lab is interested in various aspects of the antibody immune response, in particular in the differentiation and diversification events that take place in germinal centers, which lead to the generation of long-lived memory B cells and effector plasma cells. The germinal center reaction improves the affinity and the memory immune response and underlie most of the vaccination strategies used worldwide. We use state-of-the-art single cell and functional analyses to unravel the antibody response in cardiovascular disease and to identify targets for immunotherapy.

Our most recent research has shown,

• A new atherosclerosis-associated antigen that is target of protective antibodies (Nature 2021)
• Germinal-center derived antibodies are important for the atheroprotection driven by MDA-LDL (Cell Reports 2022)
• A pathway for the differentiation of plasma cells, using state-of-the-art single cell technology (EMBO Reports 2022) 

The B Cell Biology Lab welcomes enthusiastic and creative scientists to join the crew, contact us!