Ali Önder Yildirim

Director Institute of Lung Health and Immunity (LHI)

+49 89 3187-4037 oender.yildirim@helmholtz-munich.de

“Keeping the lung healthy is important for the overall well-being of us humans. COVID-19 has especially made us realize how vital a healthy lung is for survival. We therefore want to turn diseased lungs into lungs that are healthy again.”

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Ali Önder Yildirim wants to understand the immune mechanisms at the interface between environment and chronic lung diseases. His core strength is to decipher the underlying molecular mechanisms of chronic lung disease and the contribution of the immune system to these processes.

He has a doctoral title in Veterinary Medicine (Justus Liebig University, Gießen) and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Internal Medicine in the clinical research group “chronic airway diseases” at Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany. In 2006, he started at Helmholtz Munich as Group Leader “Immunopathology of COPD” at the Comprehensive Pneumology Center (CPC)/Institute of Lung Biology and Disease (ILBD).

Today, Ali Önder Yildirim is director of the LHI, Institute of Lung Health and Immunity, and director of the CPC-M, the Munich site of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), both Helmholtz Munich. There, he is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Environmental Health Center.

Immunology Chronic Lung Diseases Immunopathology Platform Imaging COPD DPLD ELD

Ali Önder Yildirim on his COPD project “WNT-induced regeneration in lung”

“This could become a potential dual therapeutic approach for COPD: Novel to be developed lymphotoxin beta receptor blockers could induce lung tissue regeneration.”