While I was born and raised in Europe (Germany) my two kids were born in North America (Canada) and Australia. Besides making this quite a challenge for family reunions my kids (4 and 7) also recently started to correct my English and French.

In the first instance I wanted to make a difference. As a basic researcher it is often difficult to see where all your work is actually going. Starting to work more translational into MS and working with and for the (mainly Canberra) MS community is the fundamental motivator and driver of my research. The feedback, suggestions and insights I have received over the years have been super valuable. It makes such a difference to know what and whom you are working for.

I am super excited about the prospect of further exploring recovery and remyelination than purely suppressing relapses. Probably because of my biased view as an immunologist, I am also very excited with the emerging interest into innate cell populations which is moving the field away from labelling MS a B and T cell dependent autoimmune condition. I think there is a lot still to understand and it will not be the same for every person with MS but even the prospect of being able to predict a bit better what treatment or therapy could benefit which individual is an exciting thought.

This project focuses on two innate cell types. Firstly, neutrophil granulocytes, which are the most abundant cell population in human blood. Neutrophils have multiple functions, one of which is to spit out their DNA in form of a NET (neutrophil extracellular trap) that is normally used to capture and trap bacteria but can in inflammatory situations like in MS relapses damage the body’s own tissue. Secondly, dendritic cells, which can moderate and direct the effects of B and T cells. By using a laboratory model of MS, we will investigate these different cell populations, their appearance and function in MS. We also plan to translate our findings, so they are relevant to people with MS, by correlating inflammatory and suppressive immune cell profiles found in the laboratory model with profiles generated from blood samples of people with and without MS.

We do know a lot about how B and T cells contribute to MS, but the innate immune system is largely underexplored. Our research will help to fill this gap. Once we understand the role innate cells play, we can utilise them as biomarkers and treatment targets opening a completely new field of MS management options. We still don’t really know why some treatments fail in individuals so this research might help to explain and counteract this.

I enjoy most the unexpected or novel findings. It is absolutely thrilling when you come up with an hypothesis and then look at a result and it changes the way we have seen things. This is when we actually push the border of our knowledge. This moment when the computer spits out the graph or the colour reaction of an assays becomes visible is priceless. It even gets better if you can see the excitement in your students when they are realising that their results mean something. The biggest challenge is to keep up the creativity and the motivation of the team over the often long and tedious troubleshooting and validation periods. And of course, the further you get in your career, the more removed you are from these exciting moments in the lab.