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Title: Human genetics of infectious diseases
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Jean Laurent Casanova
Levy Family Professor, The Rockefeller University
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Head, St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases
Senior Attending Physician, Rockefeller University Hospital
Abstract:
Casanova’s laboratory aims to understand why some children and adults develop a life-threatening or lethal illness in the course of primary infection, while most people exposed to the same microbe remain unharmed. Work in the lab has revealed that so-called inborn errors of immunity, the genetic variants that affect a person’s ability to fight off infectious agents, can confer selective vulnerability to a specific severe infectious disease. These inborn errors of immunity to infection can be rare or common, and can affect children or adults. They reveal causal mechanisms of disease that can be triggered by other factors, genetic or otherwise. This work provides theoretical and experimental support for a human genetic and immunological theory of severe infectious diseases.
About the speaker:
Jean-Laurent Casanova received his M.D. in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1992, after training at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne. He was appointed professor at the Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris in 1999 and with Laurent Abel, cofounded the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases. He was appointed professor at Rockefeller University in 2008 and named HHMI investigator in 2014. He continues to partner with Dr. Abel, maintaining their labs in Paris and NY, where they study the human genetic and immunological determinants of life-threatening infectious diseases.
Casanova has published 788 experimental and clinical papers and 268 editorials, book chapters and reviews to date. He is the recipient of multiple international awards, including the Dautrebande Prize (Belgium, 2004), Richard Lounsbery Award (USA/France, 2008), InBev Baillet-Latour Health Prize (Belgium, 2011), Ilse and Helmut Wachter Foundation Award (Austria, 2012), Robert Koch Award (Germany, 2014), Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award (France, 2014), Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award (USA, 2016), Inserm Grand Prix (France, 2016), Juan Abarca Prize (Spain, 2021), and the Novo Nordisk Prize (Denmark, 2025). He was elected to EMBO (2005), USA National Academy of Sciences (2015), USA National Academy of Medicine (2015), and Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium (2021), and received doctorates honoris causa from the University of Zürich (Switzerland, 2009), the University of Debrecen (Hungary, 2010), and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium, 2022).
Organizer: Sebastian Theobald
Contact: youngimmunologists@dgfi.org
Together with the YI podcast host Nóra Balzer, YI proudly presents the start of the second podcast season! New content on academic research topics and beyond will be published every month.
In this special holiday edition, the Young Immunologist Board of the German Association of Immunology has shared their top advice to help YOU level up your scientific career in 2025. Whether you’re just starting out in your PhD or gearing up for your next big career move, this episode is packed with tips you don’t want to missent of the biotech field. The gender gap in science startups and the mindset change in science towards entrepreneurship are debated as well.
Tune in: all ImmunoChat episodeWe also encourage you to revisit some of our current episodes. Whether you’re catching up on missed episodes or re-listening to your favorites, there’s plenty of content to keep you engaged and informed.
Curious? Follow the link and let us know your thoughts via our socials or e-mail to youngimmunologists@dgfi.org.
Read about the podcast in EJI (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eji.202350595).
Programming skills are becoming more important. Our YI* Coding Club conducts in-person meetups with advanced researchers, an online seminar including a hands-on tutorial by one of our YI members and an online summer programming session on R introduction focused on data visualization. Find us on a slack channel in the YI community slack workspace.
In this series of lectures, the DGfI Commission on Gender Equality and Career Development provides a forum for excellent female immunologists. They will share their exciting research, but also talk about their experiences in forming a career as women in STEM (=MINT).
Programme
15.10.2025 | 4-6pm | Prof. Dr. Kathrin de la Rosa
Further activities:
- Regular local round-table meetings: For example, in Hamburg and Freiburg these meetings were organised in person and we encourage you to implement this in your city as well - maybe also in an online format! Find out who works in your area and get involved with YI members across Germany and Europe through our „YI Community“ in Slack!
- We are especially keen on engaging in public outreach work, please approach us if you would have time or ideas for implementing this! Please contact the yEFIS Communication Working Group.
- Any other ideas? Approach us with new input. You can reach us via youngimmunologists@dgfi.org.
YI contributions for the Annual DGfI meetings
- Young Immunologists Symposium: YI members can present their work on the big stage to gain valuable presentation experience and chances to win attractive prizes!
- YI Social Evening to foster networking and exchange
- To support researchers with young children we organize on-site childcare.
- YI lunch session which includes the YI General Assembly followed by an open discussion round
- YI booth at the industry exhibition
yEFIS:
The EFIS Young Immunologist Task Force (yEFIS) aims to gather all early career scientists in Europe working in Immunology. Within the different European Immunology Societies, self-organised Young Immunologist (YI) groups have arisen in the last years. However, there has been limited contact between them. The aim of yEFIS Task Force is to bring all these YI groups together and build a European network to defend our interests on both a national and European level. EFIS provided us the ideal platform to start up this network and this is how in 2020 yEFIS Task Force and yEFIS Network were born.
On July 30, yEFIS had their kick-off meeting. 70 interested young immunologists from the whole of Europe tuned in. With Santiago Costas (our official representative of the DGfI YI at yEFIS), Ellen McAllister and Anne Hahn, three of our DGfI YI board members have been deeply involved in the set-up.
yEFIS already has 270 members from 20 different European countries! You can see how widely yEFIS covers Europe already. Check out the EFIS website for further information incl. registration.