Bessa, Juliana, Dr.

I’m originally from Bauru, a “small” city (for Brazil, not Switzerland) to the west of São Paulo. I first came to Switzerland in 2000 for 6 months, to perform my diploma work at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Technology in Basel. I then returned to Basel in 2001 to do a traineeship at Novartis (enrolled in the IAESTE exchange programme). A year passed and I decided that it was time to go back to Brazil. I started my Master in Immunology in 2002 at the Heart Institute, Faculty of Medicine of University of São Paulo in the group of Prof. Dr. Jorge Kalil. Two years into the masters programme, the next step would be to start my PhD, but I realized that besides the enviable organization and punctuality, Switzerland also has an outstanding immunology PhD programme. So, here I am. I joined Manfred Kopf’s group and I work in collaboration with Dr. Martin Bachmann, studying the immunological aspects of intranasal delivery of virus-like particles (VLPs) and its implications for protective vaccine design.

Publications:

Bessa J, Schmitz N, Hinton HJ, Schwarz K, Jegerlehner A, Bachmann MF. Efficient induction of mucosal and systemic immune responses by virus-like particles administered intranasally: implications for vaccine design. Eur J Immunol. 2008 Jan;38(1):114-26.

Jegerlehner A, Maurer P, Bessa J, Hinton HJ, Kopf M, Bachmann MF. TLR9 Signaling in B Cells Determines Class Switch Recombination to IgG2a. J Immunol. 2007 Feb 15;178(4):2415-20.

Gatto D, Martin SW, Bessa J, Pellicioli E, Saudan P, Hinton HJ, Bachmann MF.
Regulation of memory antibody levels: the role of persisting antigen versus
plasma cell life span. J Immunol. 2007 Jan 1;178(1):67-76.