Our Team

Andreas Hutloff studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Hamburg. He obtained his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin with a study he performed at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. He later became a group leader at the German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin and was appointed as professor of immunology at the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel in 2020. Andreas Hutloff's research has been focused for more than 20 years on the interaction of T and B cells during the adaptive immune response and the consequences for the development of autoimmune diseases, if this interaction is misguided. He has discovered several key molecules for the regulation of T follicular helper (Tfh) cells, the T cell subpopulation which provides help for B cells. This includes the Inducible Co-Stimulator ICOS and the transcription factors Klf2 and Bach2. He was involved in the discovery of ICOS deficiency patients, which was the first described molecular cause for CVID. The group was also one of the first to demonstrate that Tfh cells can survive as long-term memory cells. A special focus of the lab is the interaction of T and B cells in chronically inflamed non-lymphoid tissues, which is driven by the T cell subset of peripheral T helper cells (Tph).