Former Research Groups
Fabio Grassi
At IRB from 2002 until 2024
Antonio Lanzavecchia
At IRB from 2000 until 2020
Antonio Lanzavecchia is an immunologist known for his
work on antigen presentation, T cell activation, immunological
memory and human monoclonal antibodies. Born
in Italy, Lanzavecchia obtained a medical degree from the
University of Pavia, where he specialized in paediatrics
and in infectious diseases. He worked at the Basel Institute
for Immunology and, since 2000, is the founding
Director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in
Bellinzona, Switzerland. From 2009 to 2016 has been professor
of human immunology at the Federal Institute of
Technology and since 2017 is Professor at the Faculty of
Biomedical Sciences of the Università della Svizzera italiana
(USI). Lanzavecchia received the EMBO Gold Medal
and the Cloetta Prize and is a member of the EMBO, of
the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and of the US National
Academy of Sciences. In 2017, he received the Robert
Koch Prize and the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award and,
in 2018 the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine.
Markus G. Manz
At IRB from 2006 until 2009
Markus Manz received his university degree as M.D. in 1995 at the Eberhard- Karls-University Medical School in Tuebingen, Germany, where he also finished
his thesis work in 1996 at the department
for Transplantation Immunology.
Between 1995 and
1999, he trained in internal medicine at Tuebingen University.
From 1999 to 2001 he worked as a postdoctoral
fellow in the
laboratory of Irving Weissman at Stanford,
USA. In 2002
he became Group Leader at the IRB.
Since September 2006 he is Group Leader at
the IRB and attending
hematologist at the
Oncology Institute of
Southern Switzerland
(IOSI), Bellinzona.
His research focuses
on blood stem cells,
hemato-lymphoid development,
as well as
on hemato-lymphoid
malignancies.
Recently, he also became interested in infectious agents that
directly target the hemato-lymphoid system such as HIV.
Markus Manz is a receipient of the Artur- Pappenheim Award of the German Society
of Hematology and Oncology.
Marcus Thelen
At IRB from 2000 until 2022
Marcus Thelen studied biochemistry at the University of Tübingen (DE) and received his PhD from the University of Bern in 1985. As postdoc at the Theodor-Kocher-Institute in Bern, his interests focused on inflammation and chemokines. In 1989, he went to the Rockefeller University in New York, joining the group of Alan Aderem in the Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Immunology of the Cohn/Steinman department. Biochemical aspects of cytokine- and endotoxin-mediated phagocyte priming and cytoskeleton-mediated signal transduction were the topics of his studies. In 1992, he received a career development award (START) from the Swiss National Science Foundation and returned to the Theodor-Kocher-Institute at the University of Bern. He created his own research group working on molecular mechanisms of signal transduction in leukocytes, focusing on PI 3-kinase-dependent pathways and chemokine-mediated receptor activation. He obtained the venia docendi in 1994 and received an honorary professorship in 2001 from the University of Bern. In 2000 he moved to Bellinzona, where he helped open the IRB and directed the Signal Transduction Laboratory. Marcus Thelen retired in November 2022 and is currently working as a scientific advisor.
