Dr. Rer. Nat. Lesly Calderon

Lesly Calderon studied Biochemistry at the University of Havana in Cuba and performed her master’s studies at the same institution and in collaboration with the University of São Paolo, Brazil. She was a PhD student at the International Max Planck Research School of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg. She completed her PhD in Prof. Thomas Boehm's laboratory. During her PhD, by in vivo engineering of thymic epithelial cells, she offered novel insights into the roles of specific factors from the thymic microenvironment in the homing of hematopoietic progenitors to the thymus, commitment to the T cell lineage, expansion, and acquisition of T cell identity.

In 2012, she joined the Lymphocyte Development group led by Prof. Mathias Merkenschlager at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences, Imperial College London, where she investigated the role of the cohesin complex in neuronal transcriptional regulation. While fascinated with the molecular studies during her first postdoc, she delved her research by combining the newly gained molecular expertise with B cell Immunology. In 2018, she joined the laboratory of Prof. Meinrad Busslinger at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna and studied several molecular mechanisms by which the transcription factor Pax5 mediates B cell development. She then established an in vivo model system for pooled sgRNA CRISPR/Cas9 screens to uncover new regulators of B-cell activation and differentiation into antibody-secreting cells.

Her research group aims to expand these studies by dissecting the molecular mechanisms through which these novel genes regulate the development of B cell responses. Furthermore, she plans to establish in vitro and in vivo model systems for CRISPR/Cas9 screening to discover new regulators of IgE-expressing B cells and IgE-secreting plasma cells, which are the major drivers of allergic diseases.