Dr. Michail Lionakis National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, NIH, USA

Dr. Lionakis is a physician-scientist at the NIH and Chief of NIAID’s Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology. He cares for patients with severe fungal infections caused by various inherited and acquired immunodeficiencies. His bench-to-bedside research work aims to characterize the genetic and immune defects of human susceptibility to fungal... read moreinfections and delineate the cellular and molecular factors that regulate antifungal immunity. His laboratory has defined precise genetic, biochemical, immunologic, and cellular disease mechanisms that have led to targeted immunotherapies. He has identified interferon-gammopathy as the driver of mucosal candidiasis and multiorgan autoimmunity in AIRE deficiency and impaired microglial-neutrophil crosstalk as the driver of brain candidiasis in CARD9 deficiency. His lab has delineated novel inherited (CARD9 deficiency, STAT3 haploinsufficiency) and acquired (BTK and complement inhibitors) immunodeficiencies that cause severe fungal infections in humans.