Senior Lecturer (Guest), Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine

Research
My laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular basis of human antibody responses to diseases.

Antibodies are key components of most licensed vaccines; nevertheless many aspects of how antibodies recognize and neutralize their targets are still unknown. Pathogen-specific B cells are stimulated after antigen encounter and subsequently undergo affinity maturation and selection in distinct anatomical structures called germinal centres. After several rounds of affinity maturation and selection some B cell clones acquire high affinity for the antigen, and sometimes the ability to neutralize it. To characterise the human responses to diseases we use single B cell sorting and cloning methods to sequence the monoclonal antibodies directly from infected patients and isolate the antibodies they produce during different stages of the disease.

Our ultimate goal is to exploit our knowledge of the human antibody responses for the development of new diagnostic tools, immune-treatments and for the discovery of new vaccine targets. Our ongoing projects include:

Antibody responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Neutralizing anti-HIV-1 antibodiesNeutralizing anti-HIV-1 antibodies
Antibodies against parasites
Discovery of anti-tumor antibodies

Email: nfreund@tauex.tau.ac.il
Phone: 03-6409319
Fax: 03-6422046
https://www3.tau.ac.il/nfreund/
Office: School of Medicine, 802