Klaus Ley, M.D.

Division Head/Professor

Center for Autoimmunity and Inflammation

"You don't cure the disease by only looking at the disease. Very often cures come out of left field."

Overview

Klaus Ley, M.D., and his team study inflammation in health and disease. One part of the lab focuses on the very basic mechanisms by which immune cells reach sites of inflammation. Another part focuses on atherosclerosis, the disease of arteries that causes heart attacks, strokes and other problems. Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease of the artery wall with an autoimmune component. Autoimmune means that cells of the body attack tissues of the body itself. In people without atherosclerosis, many immune cells dampen inflammation. In people with atherosclerosis, they make the disease worse. On the flipside of this, the immune system can, in principle, be modified by vaccination. Dr. Ley’s team is working on developing a vaccine against atherosclerosis. They have developed a vaccine that is effective in mice and are now aiming at translating this to a vaccine for humans. One key technology to understand the immune response in people is single cell RNA sequencing in immune cells from patients and healthy controls.

Featured publications

Mar 16, 2020 Nat Rev Cardiol

T cell subsets and functions in atherosclerosis

Saigusa R, Winkels H, Ley K

Jun 25, 2019 Elife

Circulating T cell-monocyte complexes are markers of immune perturbations

Burel JG, Pomaznoy M, Lindestam Arlehamn CS, Weiskopf D, da Silva Antunes R, Jung Y, Babor M, Schulten V, Seumois G, Greenbaum JA, Premawansa S, Premawansa G, Wijewickrama A, Vidanagama D, Gunasena B, Tippalagama R, deSilva AD, Gilman RH, Saito M, Taplitz R, Ley K, Vijayanand P, Sette A, Peters B

Dec 7, 2018 Sci Immunol