Dr Carsten B Schmidt-Weber

 

 Activities

Prof. Carsten B. Schmidt-Weber is professor and director of the Center of Allergy and Environment of the Technical University and Helmholtz Center Munich. He is honorary member of the Allergy and Clinical Immunology at NHLI, Imperial College. He is coordinating the experimental and molecular activities of the Section of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, is supporting the molecular and immunological activities. He has bonds with theis member of the Asthma UK MRC centre. His main interest are mechanisms underlying allergen tolerance. 

 Qualifications

Prof. Schmidt-Weber qualified at the Technical University in Darmstadt and the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. He conducted his Biology-Diploma (1992) and PhD thesis (1996) on tolerogenic anti-T-cell and anti-macrophage specific interventions in experimental arthritis models at the Max-Planck Unit for Immunology and Rheumatology in Erlangen-Nuremberg. His postdoctoral work on IL-4 and IL-10 gene-regulation and immune tolerance was performed in the Pathology Department at the Brigham and Women`s Hospital of the Harvard Medical School. He was appointed by the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research and founded the Department of Molecular Immunology (1998). His thesis on "Molecular mechanisms of T-lymphocyte regulation by transforming growth factor beta" was awarded with the venia legendi in Experimental Immunology by the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich, Switzerland (2006) and joined the Imperial College 2007. On 1 of April he took the chair of Molecular Allergology at the Medical Faculty of the Technical University of Munich. the position is  associated with the director position of the Center of Allergy and Environment (ZAUM) that is co-founded by the Technical University and the Helmholtz Center Munich.

Prof. Schmidt-Weber is member of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) , the Collegium International Allergologicum, the European Respiratory Society and the German Society of Immunology (DGFI). In 2004 he was awarded with the Curt-Dehner Award of the German Pulmology Society and with the EAACi-Allergopharma Award in 2007. He published 36 peer-reviewed articles in specialty journals as well as in basic biology journals such as PLoS Biology and was supporting expert panels or review boards of the NIH, Asthma UK, MRC, SNF, DGFI and other funding bodies as well as pharmaceutical companies. 

 

Interests 

He studied mechanisms of immune tolerance, which are related to T-cell tolerance against environmental allergens. Using a wide variety of molecular and cellular approaches he addressed mechanisms of gene regulation involved in TGF-beta mediated immune suppression. More recent work focussed on the TGF-beta mediated induction of regulatory T cells and specifically the FOXP3 gene regulation and its restriction by GATA3. Most of his work is dedicated to human T-cell biology and aims on the clinical application of tolerogenic mechanisms towards long-lasting treatment effects.