People

Thomas Korn obtained his MD from Würzburg University Medical School, Germany, and received a postdoctoral training with Vijay Kuchroo at the Center of Neurologic Diseases, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. He is a board-approved Neurologist and senior physician at the Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich. He holds a professorship in Experimental Neuroimmunology at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. He studies the biology of pathogenic and regulatory T cells in the context of autoimmune inflammation in the central nervous system.

Ali Afzali is a clinical scientist who joined the lab in 2018, shortly after he began his residency in Neurology at the University Hospital “Klinikum Rechts der Isar”.

With the end of his medical studies at the “Westfälische-Wilhelms Universität” (WWU) in Münster in late 2016, Ali completed his medical doctoral thesis in the context of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies in the lab of Prof. Dr. Dr. Sven Meuth. For this, he received the award for the best medical thesis at the WWU and the young researcher award from the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Muskelkranke e.V.” (DGM).

Currently, he is investigating tolerance mechanisms against Aquaporin-4 in mouse models of Neuromyelitis optica in collaboration with the Klein lab from the LMU with a special focus on T cell negative selection. Other research interests include the investigation of retinal pathology in the context of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis using optical coherence tomography (OCT).

View Dr. Afzali’s Publications

Hsin-Hsiang Chen received an MSc in Immunology from the Graduate School of Immunology at National Taiwan University School of Medicine, Taiwan in 2019. He has been interested in revealing cytokine responses and signaling transduction in the immune system, particularly in type I IFN and signal transducers and activator of transcription (STAT). Under Professor Chien-Kuo Lee’s supervision, he has previously elucidated the role of IFN-I and STAT1 signaling in both pDCs and B cells to positively modulate humoral immunity.

He joined our group in July 2021. He currently aims to characterize the properties of Tregs that regulate the autoimmune response in the central nervous system.

Luise Eckardt is a fellow of the TUM clinician scientist program. She joined the lab in 2023, one year after starting her residency at the Department of Neurology at TUM University Clinics.

Luise obtained her MD from Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg. Between 2018 and 2021, she worked on her experimental MD thesis in the lab of Professor Sir PJ Ratcliffe in Oxford, entitled “The developmental role of the prolyl hydroxylase 2 in the pathogenesis of pseudohypoxic pheochromocytomas”. During this time, she was an MD fellow of Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds. For her thesis and the resulting publication, she received a thesis award from the Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg and a Journal Award from the British Society for Endocrinology.

Together with Dr. Ali Afzali, Luise is currently investigating tolerance mechanisms in CNS autoimmunity.

Sylvia Heink studied biology at the University of Leipzig and the University of Campinas, Brazil. In 2000, she joined the Institute for Biochemistry at the Charité University Medical Center Berlin for her PhD studies and characterized the biogenesis / turnover dynamics of immunoproteasomes. In 2004, she started to work on T lymphocytes causing CNS autoimmunity as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Immunology in Jena.

Since 2010, she is a postdoc in our group and continues to analyze factors like the cytokines IL-6, IL-12 and IL-23 in modulating the differentiation / stability of encephalitogenic Th17 cells.

Veronika Husterer received her vocational training at the BBZ Ingolstadt and worked for a few years in a microbiology lab. She joined our group in 2012. Besides genotyping and lab organization her main areas of expertise are mouse preparations, cell culture and various special methods in immunology and molecular biology.

Dr. Patrizia Leopold is a clinician scientist.

Meike Mitsdörffer studied medicine at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald, at the Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (USA) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa).

In 2004 she completed her MD thesis characterizing the role of HLA-G in gliomas and inflammatory myopathies at the University of Tübingen. In the same year she started her residency in Neurology at the University hospital Tübingen. From 2007 to 2010 she took a break from clinics for a postdoctoral fellowship in Vijay Kuchroo’s Lab (Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA). At that time she started to focus on the role of B cells in the pathogenesis of CNS autoimmunity. Subsequently, she continued her residency in Neurology, initially in Zurich (Switzerland) and since 2011 at the Department of Neurology of the Technical University hospital in Munich.

She is now working as a clinician scientist and is particularly interested in the pathogenesis and treatment of Multiple sclerosis. To further understand the differential role of B cell in CNS autoimmunity she employs a spontaneous and B-cell dependent EAE model.

Andreas Muschaweckh studied Biochemistry (B.Sc.) and Molecular Biotechnology (M.Sc.) at the Technical University Munich (TUM). After graduating from TUM in 2008, he pursued his doctoral degree at the Institute of Virology (TUM/Helmholtz Center Munich) studying the mechanisms governing the local generation of tissue-resident memory CD8+ T cells after acute viral infection of the skin. Since 2013, he also worked in a collaborative project with the Department of Experimental Neuroimmunology investigating the role of α4-integrins in the CNS trafficking of protective T helper cells during viral encephalitis.

Since 2015, he works as a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Experimental Neuroimmunology, where his research currently focuses on understanding the regulation of peripheral γδ T cells during homeostatic and inflammatory conditions. He is also interested in CNS-resident memory T cells and their contribution to CNS autoimmunity.

Diego grew up in Mexico City and studied Biology at the Humboldt University of Berlin, before moving to Munich for a Master’s degree in Human Biology from the Ludwig Maximilian University. During his studies, he began working in the field of neuroimmunology at the lab of Prof. Dr. Martin Kerschensteiner focusing on grey matter pathology and the aging effects within neuroinflammation models.

Since the beginning of 2024, Diego joined the Korn lab to pursue a PhD. As a part of the Transregional Research Center TRR355, Diego’s research aims to understand the role of T regulatory cells in central nervous system autoimmune inflammation.

Lisa Richter studied Biochemistry (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). During her Bachelor studies, she investigated the dynamic rearrangement of the cytoskeleton and invasive features of dendritic cells. In her Master’s Thesis, she used whole-cell patch-clamping to analyze the electrophysiology of nerve cells in the presence of various pharmaceuticals.

Lisa joined our lab as a PhD student in July 2021 and is currently working on factors for priming of pathogenic and non-pathogenic Th17 cells in the context of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Monika Pfaller studied at the University of Regensburg where she obtained a B.Sc in Biology. She started working at Klinikum rechts der Isar in 2016 when she joined the Translational Neuroimmunology group of Klaus Lehmann-Horn. She specializes in B cell receptor chain sequencing, molecular biology and mouse research. In March 2020, she joined our group to refine her expertise in neuroimmunological methods and is currently supervising lab organization.

Anne Schnelzer joined our lab as a clinical scientist in 2022 shortly after the beginning of her residency in Neurology at TUM University Clinics.

Due to her interest in Immunology, after completing her medical studies at the Friedrich Alexander Universität (FAU) Erlangen, she wrote her doctoral thesis on endotoxin tolerance of macrophages in sepsis.

Her current research focuses on T cell trafficking in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis.

Lea Seeholzer studied at the University of Regensburg where she obtained a B.Sc. in Biology as well as a M.Sc. in Experimental and Clinical Neuroscience. Her areas of expertise are mouse preparations, sequencing as well as other methods of molecular biology and immunology. As of March 2023, she joined our team at Klinikum rechts der Isar to support the research in practical and organizational aspects.

Christopher Sie studied Molecular Medicine at the University Medical Center Göttingen where he specialized in immunology by working on diabetic T cell metabolism with Holger Reichardt at the Institute for Molecular Immunology, on Melanoma immunosuppression with David Schrama at the University Hospital Würzburg, and on T cell migration in preclinical EAE with Alexander Flügel at the Institute for Multiple Sclerosis Research.

He received his Master’s degree in 2011 and joined our lab in 2012. His doctoral work was supported by a Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds PhD fellowship. For his thesis, he analyzed the role of alpha4 integrin in DC migration. He has recently concluded our project on Th17 autoregulatory cytokines and is now specializing in data science.

Ingrid Stas studied medicine at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen from 2014 to 2021. In 2018, she started her scientific career in an international oncology research group directed by Prof. Dr. Lars Zender that is specialized on tumour biology and targeted tumour therapies. In her medical doctoral thesis, she investigated the role of DNA damage response mechanisms in cellular senescence and their potential as target structures for senolytic therapies. Since 2021, Ingrid is doing her residency in neurology at the university hospital Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich. She joined our group as a clinician scientist in 2022 and is currently characterizing the pathophysiology and T-/B-cell interaction in a new mouse model of Neuromyelitis optica.

Sofia Tyystjärvi studied Biochemistry (B.Sc.) and Molecular Systems Biology (M.Sc.) at the University of Turku (Finland) from 2013 to 2019. During her studies she worked as a research assistant and focused on the developmental origin of macrophages in the mammary gland and ovaries. She did her Master’s thesis at Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) on macrophage targeted cancer immunotherapy. She joined our group in January 2020 as a PhD student and is currently investigating T cell priming and trafficking in the animal model of multiple sclerosis.