Rate My Professor Christoph Hess

Hess completed medical school in Zürich and Lausanne and earned his M.D. and Ph.D. at the University of Basel. His research focuses on the translational aspects of lymphocyte function and its metabolic basis, seeking to understand disorders of immunometabolic regulation. The Hess Lab explores the metabolic repertoire of immune cells, including metabolic enzymes and pathways, nutrient sensors, metabolic checkpoint kinases, and epigenetic programming of metabolic genes, to delineate how metabolism regulates immune function in health and disease. Key findings include acetate's role in regulating T cell metabolism during infection and inflammation (Balmer et al., Immunity 2016; Cell Metabolism 2020), TGF-β-mediated metabolic suppression of CD4+ T cells in cancer (Dimeloe et al., Science Signaling 2019), and hypermetabolic phenotypes in primary antibody deficiencies such as SDHA mutations in persistent polyclonal B cell lymphocytosis (Burgener et al., Nat Immunol 2019). He is a Principal Investigator at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease and serves on the steering committee of the Cambridge Immunology Network. Hess was awarded the Cloëtta Prize. Notable publications include "A metabolic dependency of EBV can be targeted to hinder B cell transformation" (Science, 2024), "Extracellular Mg2+ regulates memory CD8+ T cell effector maturation via LFA-1" (Cell, 2022), "A patient-centric characterization of systemic recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection" (Nature Immunology, 2023), "Serine is an essential metabolite for effector T cell expansion" (Cell Metabolism, 2017), and "Rapid effector function of memory CD8+ T cells requires an immediate-early glycolytic switch" (Nature Immunology, 2013).