infection and inflammation
Name: Professor Florian Kern
Academic position: Foundation Chair in Immunology
Research: Cellular and humoral immune responses to pathogens, antigen-specific flow-cytometry, Cytomegalovirus infection, tuberculosis, immunity in the ageing population, T-cell lines for adoptive immunotherapy
Contact details: Medical School Research Building
Brighton and Sussex Medical School
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9PS
UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 877889
Fax: +44 (0)1273 877884
E-mail:
Biography:
- 2006-present Foundation Chair in Immunology, Brighton and Sussex Medical School
- 2003-6 Research Team Leader, Charité, Berlin, Germany
- 2000-3 Head of Clinical immunology Lab. Institute for Medical Immunology, Charité, Berlin, Germany
- 1995-2000 Research and Clinical Fellow, Laboratory Director, Immunology, Institute for Medical Immunology, Charité, Berlin, Germany
- 1991-5 Assistant Doctor, Department of Internal Medicine “Theodor Brugsch” and Institute for Medical Immunology (Nephrology/Transplantation), Charité, Berlin, Germany
Professor Kern studied medicine in Düsseldorf/Germany before moving to Berlin/Germany as a junior medical doctor in 1991. In his PhD, awarded 1994, he investigated the usefulness of an unspecific stimulus for in-vitro histamine release in atopic children.
He obtained his first clinical appointment in a kidney transplantation service, which stimulated his interest in clinical immunology. He moved to the Institute for Medical Immunology at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin in 1995 and focused on organ transplantation.
During the following years he focused on the assessment of pathogen specific T-cell responses in transplant recipients and his group devised several new approaches that are now being used in T-cell monitoring after organ or bone marrow transplantation in many clinical studies.
His work has made an important contribution to the field of antigen specific immunology by employing a combination of peptide (pool) based T-cell stimulation and multi-parameter flow-cytometry allowing rapid epitope mapping [Kern-F et al. , Nat Med 1998, 4(8): 975], efficient T-cell response monitoring [Kern-F et al., Eur J Immunol 2000, 30(6):1676; ; Kern-F et al., J Inf Dis 2002, 185(12):1709; Bunde-T et al., J Exp Med 2005, 201(7):1031] and dissection of a whole virus proteome in regards of T-cell target proteins [Sylwester et al., J Exp Med 2005, 202(5):673]. These tools are used by many labs across the world, including at the NIH, in particular in the areas of vaccine induced T-cell responses.
Since 2003 Professor Kern has concentrated on clinical infection-related research, mainly as the head of a clinical immunological research group at Charité in Berlin. He received a certificate as specialist in immunology in 2006 (German Society of Immunology) and as a clinical specialist in Immunology (EU qualification) in 2006. In November 2006 he was appointed Chair of Immunology at BSMS in Brighton.
Professor Kern is co-organiser of a series of very successful meetings on the measurement of antigen specific immune responses (www.masir.org) and has been a faculty member of the international flow cytometry school which was most recently held at BSMS in Brighton in September 2007 (www.ifcs.de).
Awards:
- Young Investigator Award, ASTP-Meeting (Transplant 2001), Chicago 2001
- Charité Research Award in Basic Sciences 1998, issued by the Medical Faculty of Charité
- Young Investigator Award 1993, Conference of the EDTA (European Dialysis and Transplantation Association) in Glasgow
Other information
- Honorary contract as group leader at Institute for Medical Immunology, Charité Berlin (www.charite.de/immunologie/)
- Co-organiser of MASIR meetings (www.masir.org)
- Co-organiser of International Flow-Cytometry School (www.ifcs.de)
- Member of British Society of Immunology (BSI)
- Member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Immunologie (DGfI)
- Member of the International Society for the Biological Therapy of Cancer (ISBTC)
- Member of SFB Transregio 19 (www.sfb-transregio-19.de/page/index.php)
Recent publications
Streitz, M., L. Tesfa, V. Yildirim, A. Yahyazadeh, T. Ulrichs, R. Lenkei, A. Quassem, G. Liebetrau, L. Nomura, H. Maecker, H.D. Volk, and F. Kern. 2007. Loss of receptor on tuberculin-reactive T-cells marks active pulmonary tuberculosis. PLoS ONE 2:e735.
Li Pira, G., F. Kern, J. Gratama, M. Roederer, and F. Manca. 2007. Measurement of antigen specific immune responses: 2006 update. Cytometry B Clin Cytom 72:77-85.
Ay, B., M. Streitz, P. Boisguerin, A. Schlosser, C.C. Mahrenholz, S.D. Schuck, F. Kern, and R. Volkmer. 2007. Sorting and pooling strategy: a novel tool to map a virus proteome for CD8 T-cell epitopes. Biopolymers 88:64-75.
Zelenikhin, P.V., G.V. Cherepnev, F. Kern, and O.N. Ilinskaia. 2006. Binase does not induce polyclonal T-cell response. Dokl Biol Sci 407:195-197.
Volk, H.D., B. Sawitzki, F. Kern, C. Hoflich, R. Sabat, and P. Reinke. 2006. Immunomodulatory therapies: challenges of individualized therapy strategies. Ernst Schering Found Symp Proc 4:59-68.
Letsch, A., U. Keilholz, F. Kern, A.M. Asemissen, E. Thiel, and C. Scheibenbogen. 2006. Specific central memory T cells in the bone marrow of patients immunized against tyrosinase peptides. J Immunother (1997) 29:201-207.
Wiesner, M., C. Zentz, M.H. Hammer, M. Cobbold, F. Kern, H.J. Kolb, W. Hammerschmidt, R. Zeidler, and A. Moosmann. 2005. Selection of CMV-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cells by mini-EBV-transformed B cell lines. Eur J Immunol 35:2110-2121.
Sylwester, A.W., B.L. Mitchell, J.B. Edgar, C. Taormina, C. Pelte, F. Ruchti, P.R. Sleath, K.H. Grabstein, N.A. Hosken, F. Kern, J.A. Nelson, and L.J. Picker. 2005. Broadly targeted human cytomegalovirus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells dominate the memory compartments of exposed subjects. J Exp Med 202:673-685.
Kern, F., G. LiPira, J.W. Gratama, F. Manca, and M. Roederer. 2005. Measuring Ag-specific immune responses: understanding immunopathogenesis and improving diagnostics in infectious disease, autoimmunity and cancer. Trends Immunol 26:477-484.
Hammer, M.H., S. Meyer, G. Brestrich, A. Moosmann, F. Kern, L. Tesfa, N. Babel, A. Mittenzweig, C.M. Rooney, W. Hammerschmidt, H.D. Volk, and P. Reinke. 2005. HLA type-independent generation of antigen-specific T cells for adoptive immunotherapy. Eur J Immunol 35:2250-2258.
Bunde, T., A. Kirchner, B. Hoffmeister, D. Habedank, R. Hetzer, G. Cherepnev, S. Proesch, P. Reinke, H.D. Volk, H. Lehmkuhl, and F. Kern. 2005. Protection from cytomegalovirus after transplantation is correlated with immediate early 1-specific CD8 T cells. J Exp Med 201:1031-1036.