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Dr. Maike Hofmann from the Medical Center - University of Freiburg has been awarded this year's Adolf Kußmaul Prize of the Southwest German Society of Gastroenterology for her research on exhausted immune cells

Dr. Maike Hofmann, research group leader in the Department of Medicine II at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg, has been awarded this year's Adolf Kußmaul Prize of the Southwest German Society of Gastroenterology. The prize, endowed with 5,000 euros, was presented to Hofmann virtually by conference president Prof. Dr. Thomas Seufferlein at the annual conference of the Southwest German Society of Gastroenterology on June 25, 2021. Hofmann was honored for her research on the role of special immune cells, so-called virus-specific CD8+ T cells, in chronic hepatitis C virus infection.

These cells are crucial for fighting the virus. In patients with a chronic infection, they are limited in their antiviral properties - a phenomenon called T cell exhaustion. In her award-winning work, which was recently published in the leading journal Nature Immunology, Hofmann was able to show that even after successful antiviral therapy, the virus-specific CD8+ T cells exhibit a molecular scar and no longer become fully functional. This result is highly relevant, as this basic immunological phenomenon of a molecular scar of immune cells can be assumed for other viral infections as well as tumor diseases.

Hofmann is funded by the Margarete von Wrangell Habilitation Program for Women, which is supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg. She is also a sub-project leader in three collaborative research centers in Freiburg (TRR 179 Viral Hepatitis, SFB 1160 IMPATH and SFB OncoEscape).

The prize, which has been awarded annually since 1991 on the occasion of the conference of the Southwest German Society of Gastroenterology, is named after the gastroenterologist Adolf Kußmaul (1822-1902) and is donated by the Falk Foundation in Freiburg.

Press release (January 5, 2021): Permanently scarred: Chronic hepatitis C infections leave traces on immune cells

Picture caption: Dr. Maike Hofmann
Image source: Klaus Polkowski