Excellence Awardee 2017


Thierry Calandra, Lausanne, Switzerland

Thierry Calandra is Professor of medicine and head of the Infectious Diseases Service at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland. He received his MD degree from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and his PhD degree from the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He is board certified in infectious diseases and internal medicine.His research interests have focused on innate immunity, sepsis, bacterial and fungal infections in critically ill and ICU patients and in immunocompromised hosts. He has published close to 300 monographs, book chapters, original and reviews articles which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Clinical Infectious Diseases, the Journal of Infectious Diseases, Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Review Immunology, the Journal of Experimental Medicine and in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.He has received career awards and prizes from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Leenaards Foundation, the Max Cloëtta Foundation and the University of Lausanne.Thierry Calandra has served or is serving on research councils (Swiss National Science Foundation), programme committees (European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, American Society for Microbiology) and other committees (Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases, International Sepsis Forum, Mycosis Study Group, Fungal Infection Network of Switzerland). He also is a former president or chair of the Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases, the Infectious Diseases Group of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, the International Immunocompromised Host Society and the Fungal Infection Network of Switzerland.

Overview of academic and research activities:Thierry Calandra’s research interests include innate immunity, sepsis and bacterial and fungal infections in critically ill and ICU patients and in immunocompromised hosts.As a clinical investigator, he led or was closely associated with the design, conduct and analyses of studies and clinical trials on the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of infections in neutropenic cancer patients, surgical and ICU patients and on immunomodulating therapies for patients with sepsis and septic shock. As a translational scientist, his research projects focused on innate immunity and on the pathogenesis and treatment of sepsis. He explored the sensing of microbial products (lipopolysaccharide, exotoxins) by pattern recognition molecules and receptors (LPS binding proteins, CD14, Toll-like receptors) expressed by innate immune cells, and the role played by proinflammatory mediators, particularly the cytokine macrophage migration inhibitory factor, in the host defense response against microbial pathogens.