Franca Ronchese
Professor
Department of Immune Cell Biology
Malaghan Institute of Medical Research
New Zealand
Biography
Professor Franca Ronchese completed her studies at the University of Padova, Italy and spent four years as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health, USA. She then worked as an independent Scientific Member at the Basel Institute for Immunology, Switzerland, before being awarded a Malaghan Senior Research Fellowship to establish her research programme at the Malaghan Institute in 1994.
Research Interest
My primary research interest is dendritic cells - specialised immune cells that can process environmental cues into signals that activate or switch off immune responses. Dendritic cells are found in any body tissue, and especially those regularly exposed to the outside world – the skin, airways and, via our food, the gut. They can reach between and around other cells to form an immune ‘filter’. Fundamentally, their job is to educate our immune system on what to react to and what to ignore.
Publications
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Steiger S, Kuhn S, Ronchese F, Harper J (2015) MSU crystals induce upregulation of NK1.1-dependent killing by macrophages and support tumor-resident NK1.1+ monocyte/macrophage populations in anti-tumor therapy.J Immunol
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Hilligan KL, Connor LM, Schmidt AJ, Ronchese F (2016) Activation-Induced TIM-4 Expression Identifies Differential Responsiveness of Intestinal CD103+ CD11b+ Dendritic Cells to a Mucosal Adjuvant. PLoS One
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Connor LM, Tang SC, Cognard E, Ochiai S, Hilligan KL, Old SI, Pellefigues C, White RF, Patel D, Smith AA, Eccles DA, Lamiable O, McConnell MJ, Ronchese F (2017) Th2 responses are primed by skin dendritic cells with distinct transcriptional profiles. J Exp Med
