Professor Dr Alexander Enk

The scientific emphasis of Alexander Enk is the area of immunodermatology. Even during his time as a postdoc at the national cancer institute he was devoted to studying the biology of dendritic cells as well with respect to the immunostimulatory effects as well as to their tolerising functions. The investigations during that period where indicative of the fact that the inflammatory milieu of skin diseases and the function of dendritic cells was either enhanced or turned off depending on the environment. For the first time he was able to describe the function of the counterregulatory cytokine IL 10 on dendritic cells.
In the following years his em-phasis switched to tumour immunology and the biology of regulatory T-cells. In these studies he could demonstrate the tolerizing effects of human tumour cells and the function of regulatory T-cells on immune responses. Several clinical applications resulted in early clinical studies.