Luís Almeida

Luís Almeida obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. During his master’s thesis, he focused on the role of neurotrophic factor receptors in type 3 innate lymphoid cells at Dr. Henrique Veiga-Fernandes’ group. Afterwards, he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN fellowship and moved to Hannover, Germany to carry out his doctoral studies at Prof. Tim Sparwasser’s group in the Hannover Medical School. His work led to the discovery that ribosome-targeting antibiotics also exhibit antibiotic-independent immunosuppressive properties, by inhibiting mitochondrial translation in T Helper cells. After his PhD, he moved to the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz to re-join the group of Prof. Tim Sparwasser. He is now focused on understanding how bacteria-derived metabolites can be used to inhibit regulatory T cell differentiation and function as a way to boost the immune response against tumors.