Marcus Buggert
Assistant professor
Docent and group leader at KI. Research focus on cell-mediated immunity to viral infections and cancer.
About me
Master in Biomedicine at KI, 2004-2009. PhD studies at KI, 2010-2014. Post doc at University of Pennsylvania, USA, 2014-2017. Assistant Professor at KI, 2018-. Group leader at KI, 2019-. Docent at KI, 2021-
Research description
Our group conducts research on cell-mediated immunity. More specifically, we are interested in understanding how memory T cells recognize and eliminates viral infections and tumors. T cells are critical for immune control of multiple viral infections and also represent a major cellular target of immune checkpoint therapies that have entirely revolutionized the treatment outcome in cancer care. However, much of our current understanding of memory T cell functions are derived from studies of peripheral blood in humans. With emerging data from us and others demonstrating that most memory T cells in tissues are non-circulating resident cells, there is a need to better assess how, where and what type of T cells that orchestrate immunity at barrier sites. The group focuses our work on many of these concepts with the overall aims to i) study the heterogeneity of circulating and resident memory T cells in human organ donors, ii) identify alternative functions of memory T cells in human tissues, and iii) understand how memory T cells maintain control of tumors and viral infections, such as HIV and SARS-CoV-2.