Article

The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) cordially invites you to attend the talk

‘Self-reactivity and lineage determination of antibody forming cells’
By Klaus Rajewsky
Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine

Date: Wed., 6 June 2018, 11.00 a.m.
Venue: IMP Lecture Hall, Campus-Vienna-Biocenter 1, 1030 Vienna

Klaus Rajewsky is an immunologist whose research on B cells and the immune system has proven very influential in the field. Together with his collaborators, he developed a general method of targeted mutagenesis in mouse embryonic stem cells by introducing bacteriophage- and yeast-derived recombination systems, which opened the way for conditional gene targeting.

In immunology, he and colleagues developed the antigen-bridge model of T-B cell cooperation, identified germinal centers as the sites of antibody somatic hypermutation, the B cell antigen receptor as a survival determinant of B cells, and the germinal center as the major site of human B cell lymphomagenesis, including Hodgkin lymphoma. Recent work focusses on microRNA control, mouse models of human B cell lymphomas, immune development and gene editing in mouse and human cells.

Klaus Rajewsky studied medicine and chemistry in Frankfurt and Munich. Following his medical exam in 1962, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and at the Institute of Genetics of the University of Cologne. In 1966, he became head of its newly established immunology unit and in 1970 Professor of Molecular Genetics. His research focused on lymphomas, in particular Hodgkin's disease, and on the role of B cells within the immune system.

In 2001, Rajewsky moved to the US to work at the Center for Blood Research at Harvard Medical School, Boston. He expanded his research interest to the role of microRNAs in conjunction with immune development and control. Currently, Klaus Rajewsky is a Professor and Group Leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin. His work has been honored by numerous awards, among them the Robert Koch Prize, Brupbacher Prize for Cancer Research, Novartis Prize for Basic Immunology, and Ernst Schering Prize. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Klaus Rajewsky is coming to the IMP upon invitation by Meinrad Busslinger.

About the Max Birnstiel Lectures

The Max Birnstiel Lectures are a special series of seminars at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna and represent the highest award that the IMP can give to outside scientists. They are named after the founding director of the institute, Max L. Birnstiel, who passed away in 2014. Each year, five to six scientists are invited to deliver one of these lectures, among them a number of Nobel Prize laureates. The Max Birnstiel Lectures attract considerable attention on campus and within the wider scientific community and invariably draw a large audience to the IMP.

Programme of the Max Birnstiel Lectures

www.imp.ac.at/seminars/max-birnstiel-lecture-series

Videos of past Max Birnstiel Lectures

https://www.imp.ac.at/research/lectures-seminars/max-birnstiel-lecture-videos/