Robert Thimme MD

rof. Dr. Robert Thimme is the Director of the Department of Medicine II (Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Endocrinology and Infectious Diseases). His research focus lies on the immune responses in hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection as well as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). By using novel cell culture models his group could for example show that different effector functions are dominantly required for the inhibition of viral replication in HBV versus HCV infection. In addition, his group could show the relative contribution of different mechanisms of T cell failure, such as viral escape and T cell exhaustion in HBV and HCV infection. Different determinants of viral escape in T cell exhaustion, such as ongoing viral replication, could be employed. The group could also show that inhibition of viral replication in case of HCV leads to a restoration of proliferation capacity of virus specific CD8+ T cells. His work is supported by grants from the DFG, BMBF, several foundations and the EU. He has published more than a hundred papers on the tissue of immunobiology of HBV, HCV and HCC and is or has been in the editorial boards of several journals, such as Journal of Clinical Investigation, Gastroenterology, GCT, Journal of Hepatology or Journal of Infectous Diseases.