George, Christopher MUELLER

Dr. Christopher Mueller is CNRS director of research at the University of Strasbourg, France, and the CNRS research team Immunology and Immunopathology. He has obtained his PhD in Heidelberg / the University of London on c-fos transcription factors and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in UC-Berkeley working on transcriptional regulation in the yeast S. cerevisiae. His research in immunology started at Schering-Plough, Inc., France, working with Jacques Banchereau and Yong-Jun Liu. He integrated the French national research system CNRS to continue his research on the immunobiology of the myeloid cell lineage in the skin and lymphoid tissue. He now heads a research team in Strasbourg to study the impact of the cellular microenvironment on immune cell differentiation and activation in the context of infection and autoimmunity. He has recently shown that mesenchymal cells instruct lymphatic endothelial cells via TNFSF11 (RANKL) – TNFRSF11a (RANK) to create the niche for sinusoidal macrophage differentiation. He member of the Idex-funded Strasbourg Drug Institute, former director of the International PhD programme of the University of Strasbourg, co-founder of the Upper Rhine Immunology group, comprising the Universities of Strasbourg, Freiburg, Karlsruhe and Basel, and leader of the EURIdoc PhD programme.