Vivek Thacker
Group Leader Heidelberg University, Germany Email: vivek.thacker@uni-heidelberg.de
VALIDATE Role: Investigator
Research Keywords TB, lung-on-chip, mouse models, mucosal immunity, biofilms
Biography I received my undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences in 2010 and my PhD in Physics in 2014, both from the University of Cambridge. Thereafter I moved to the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2015 as a Human Frontier Science Program Long-Term Fellow to work in the lab of Prof John McKinney. Over eight years as a postdoctoral fellow and then senior scientist, I developed and applied organ-chip and organoid models to investigate host-pathogen interactions with a particular focus on TB. In my independent lab at the University of Heidelberg, I am interested in understanding how mycobacteria adapt to their host including through the formation of biofilm-like cords and early host-pathogen interactions that might drive progression vs control. This is difficult to study in animal models but is important for developing mucosa-targeted therapeutics and host-protective strategies.
Key Publications
Related websites
|
