Rate My Professor Mireille Lahoud

Associate Professor Mireille Lahoud is a researcher in the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Monash University, within the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. She heads the Lahoud Laboratory, which investigates dendritic cell receptors, their roles in pattern recognition of pathogen-associated and damage-associated molecular patterns, and their applications in immune modulation. Lahoud completed her PhD and early postdoctoral training at Monash University, focusing on the identification of novel DNA binding proteins. She then joined Professor Ken Shortman's team at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for postdoctoral research, where she applied her molecular expertise to the analysis of dendritic cell subsets, identifying surface molecules that underpin dendritic cell function in mice and humans and serve as targets for immune modulation. In 2012, she established a research team at the Burnet Institute dedicated to dendritic cell receptors and their therapeutic potential. In 2015, she relocated her team to Monash University. She holds honorary positions as Lecturer at the Mater Research Institute-UQ and Senior Fellow at the Burnet Institute.

Lahoud's research elucidates how dendritic cells sense environmental danger signals through specific receptors, enabling tailored immune responses. Her group has discovered and characterized key receptors, including Clec9A, which recognizes damaged cells via exposed actin filaments to promote cross-presentation and potent CD4 and CD8 T cell responses for vaccines and immunotherapies against cancer and infectious diseases, and Clec12A, which dampens immune responses to control inflammatory conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease. Notable publications include 'Targeting antigen to mouse dendritic cells via Clec9A induces potent CD4 T cell responses biased toward a follicular helper phenotype' (2011), 'The Dendritic Cell Receptor Clec9A Binds Damaged Cells via Exposed Actins Filaments' (2012, Immunity), 'DEC-205 is a cell surface receptor for CpG oligonucleotides' (2012, PNAS), 'Human CD141+ (BDCA-3)+ dendritic cells represent a unique myeloid DC subset that cross-presents glycosylated antigens' (2010, Journal of Experimental Medicine), and recent works such as 'Pyroptotic cell corpses are crowned with F-actin-rich filopodia that engage CLEC9A signaling in incoming dendritic cells' (2025, Nature Immunology) and 'FcRn regulates antigen presentation in dendritic cells downstream of DEC205-targeted vaccines' (2024, npj Vaccines). Her contributions advance DC-targeting strategies for improved vaccines and immunotherapies.