Publications
Recent Preprints
Li L, Pohl L, Hutloff A, Niethammer B, Thurley K. A homogenization approach for spatial cytokine distributions in immune-cell communication.
https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.31.715485
Van der Voort G, Effern M, Yong MCR, Kiwitz L, Turiello R, Leonardelli S, Ng S, Corvino D, Bald T, Glodde N, Thurley K, Hasenauer J, Hölzel M. Longitudinal spatial profiling of neutrophils during adoptive T cell therapy in murine melanoma reveals distinct lymph node infiltration patterns across anatomical sites.
https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.02.24.707484
Makdissi N, Viola MF, Steinheuer LM, ..., Thurley K, Mass E. Size-dependent plastic exposure disrupts macrophage function and tissue-specific metabolism.
https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6204281/v1 .
Research articles - Thurley group
#: equal contribution
*: shared correspondence
Bach L, Chang Y, Transito OA, Ghasemi M, Steinheuer LM, Steffen T, De Domenico E, Ulas T, Wunderlich FT, Beyer MD, Thurley K, Baumjohann D. TGF-βand IL-2 differentially shape T follicular regulatory celldifferentiation and stability in vitro. Cell Mol Immunol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41423-026-01440-9
Van der Voort G, Effern M, Yong MCR, Kiwitz L, Turiello R, Leonardelli S, Ng S, Corvino D, Bald T, Glodde N, Thurley K, Hasenauer J, Hölzel M.
Longitudinal spatial neutrophil profiling during ACT in murine melanoma reveals distinct lymph node infiltration patterns. npj Syst Biol Appl 12, 84 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41540-026-00765-5
Kreider RL, Biniaris-Georgallis S-I, Grothey B, Triantafyllopoulou A,
Steinheuer LM, Thurley K. Amplification cycles through innate lymphoid cells at the onset of lupus nephritis. Front Immunol 17:1756560 (2026). https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2026.1756560.
Sieckmann K, Winnerling N, Ribeiro DJS, Yüksel S, Kardinal R, Steinheuer LM, Frechen F, Corrêa LH, Schermann G, Klausen C, Blank-Stein N, Schulte-Schrepping J, Osei-Sarpong C, Becker M, Bonaguro L, Beyer M, Louise May-Simera H, Zurkovic J, Thiele C, Thurley K, Sorokin L, Ruiz de Almodovar C, Mass E, Wachten D. BBS8-dependent ciliary Hedgehog signaling governs cell fate in the white adipose tissue. EMBO Journal 44(19):5315-5336 (2025). doi: 10.1038/s44318-025-00524-y.
Kaiser KM, Raabe J, ToVinh M, Hack G, Ahmad S, Müller N, Cassella J, Walravens SI, Alfaro P, Arias Garcia L, Kaczmarek DJ, Marwitz T, Goeser F, Nischalke HD, Lutz P, Sommer N, Vilz T, Toma M, Steiner S, Hommerding O, Oldenburg J, Hölzel M, Kadzik S, Maas A, Eckrich J, Zumfelde P, Shakeri F, Nesic S, Buness A, De Caro E, Becker M, Beyer MD, Ulas T, Aschenbrenner AC, Steinheuer LM, Thurley K, Kroh S, Uecker R, Hauser AE, Gohr FN, Schmidt FI, Wang D, Held K, Baranov O, Geldmacher C, Strassburg CP, Hüneburg R, Krämer B, Nattermann J. IL-17A-producing NKp44(-) group 3 innate lymphoid cells accumulate in Familial Adenomatous Polyposis duodenal tissue. Nat Commun 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-58907-y.
Schacht SS, Graffunder J, Durek P, Wehrenberg J, Siracusa A, Biese C, Mashreghi MF, Thurley K, Bauer L, Hutloff A. Activation and maturation of antigen-specific B cells in nonectopic lung infiltrates are independent of germinal center reactions in the draining lymph node. Cell Mol Immunol 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41423-025-01285-8.
Horn V#, Cancino C#, Steinheuer LM#, Obermayer B, Fritz K, Nguyen AL, Plattner C, Bösel D, Burns M, Schulz AR, Mantzivi E, Lissner D, Conrad T, Mashreghi MF, Sonnenberg E, Beule D, Flatz L, TRR241 IBDome Consortium, Trjanoski Z, Weidinger C, Mei HE, Siegmund B, Thurley K*, Hegazy AN*. Multimodal profiling of peripheral blood identifies proliferating circulating effector CD4+ T cells as predictors for response to integrin α4β7-blocking therapy in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Gastroenterology 2025. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2024.09.021
Corvino D, Batstone M, Hughes BGM, Kempchen T, Ng S, Salim N, Schneppenheim F, Rommel R, Kumar A, Pearson S, Madore J, Koufariotis LT, Steinheuer LM, Pathirana D, Thurley K, Hölzel M, Borcherding N, Braun M, Bald T. Type I Interferon Drives a Cellular State Inert to TCR-Stimulation and Could Impede Effective T-Cell Differentiation in Cancer. Eur J Immunol 2025.
Biniaris-Georgallis SI, Aschman T, Stergioula K, Schreiber F, Jafari V, Taranko A, Karmalkar T, Kasapi A, Lenac Rovis T, Jelencic V, Bejarano DA, Fabry L, Papacharalampous M, Mattiola I, Molgora M, Hou J, Hublitz KW, Heinrich F, Guerra GM, Durek P, Patone G, Lindberg EL, Maatz H, Hölsken O, Krönke G, Mortha A, Voll RE, Clarke AJ, Hauser AE, Colonna M, Thurley K, Schlitzer A, Schneider C, Stamatiades EG, Mashreghi MF, Jonjic S, Hübner N, Diefenbach A, Kanda M, Triantafyllopoulou A. Amplification of autoimmune organ damage by NKp46-activated ILC1s. Nature 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07907-x
Branchi V, Hosni R, Kiwitz L, Ng S, van der Voort G, Bambi N, Kleinfelder E, Esser LK, Dold L, Langhans B, Gonzalez-Carmona MA, Ting S, Kristiansen G, Kalff JC, Thurley K, Hölzel M, Matthaei H, Toma MI. Expression of the large amino acid transporter SLC7A5/LAT1 on immune cells is enhanced in primary sclerosing cholangitis-associated cholangiocarcinoma and correlates with poor prognosis in cholangiocarcinoma. Hum Pathol 2024, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humpath.2024.105670.
Brunner P, Kiwitz L, Li L, Thurley K. Diffusion-limited cytokine signaling in T cell populations. iScience 27:110134 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.110134
Kwon G, Wiedemann A, Steinheuer LM, Stefanski AL, Szelinski F, Racek T, Frei AF, Hatje K, Kam-Thong T, Schubert D, Schindler T, Dörner T*, Thurley K*. Transcriptional profiling upon T cell stimulation reveals down-regulation of inflammatory pathways in T and B cells in SLEversus Sjögren’s syndrome. NPJ Syst Biol Appl 9:62 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41540-023-00319-z
Burt P and Thurley K. Distribution modeling quantifies collective TH cell decision circuits in chronic inflammation. Science Advances 9, eadg7668 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adg7668.
Burt P, Peine M, Peine C, Borek Z, Serve S, Floßdorf M, Hegazy AN, Höfer T, Löhning M*, Thurley K*. Dissecting the dynamic transcriptional landscape of early T helper cell differentiation into Th1, Th2, and Th1/2 hybrid cells. Front Immunol 13:928018 (2022). https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2022.928018
Burt P, Cornelis R, Geißler G, Hahne S, Radbruch A, Chang HD*, Thurley K*. Data-Driven Mathematical Model of Apoptosis Regulation in Memory Plasma Cells. Cells 11:1547 (2022). https://doi.org/10.3390/cells11091547
Cendón C, Du W, Durek P, Liu YC, Alexander T, Serene L, Yang X, Gasparoni G, Salhab A, Nordström K, Lai T, Schulz AR, Rao A, Heinz GA, Stefanski AL, Claußnitzer A, Siewert K, Dörner T, ChangHD, Volk HD, Romagnani C, Qin Z, Hardt S, Perka C, Reinke S, Walter J, Mashreghi MF, Thurley K*, Radbruch A*, Dong J*. Resident memory CD4+ T lymphocytes mobilize from bone marrow to contribute to a systemic secondary immune reaction. Eur J Immunol 0: 1–16 (*corresponding authors) (2022). https://doi.org/10.1002/eji.202149726
Hammer Q, Rückert T, Borst EM, Dunst J, Haubner A, Durek P, Heinrich F, Gasparoni G, Babic M, Tomic A, Pietra G, Nienen M, Blau IW, Hofmann J, Na IK, Prinz I, Koenecke C, Hemmati P, Babel N, Arnold R, Walter J, Thurley K, Mashreghi MF, Messerle M, Romagnani C. Peptide-specific recognition of human cytomegalovirus strains controls adaptive natural killer cells. Nat Immunol. 19(5):453-63 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-018-0082-6.
Thurley K*, Wu LF*, Altschuler SJ*. Modeling Cell-to-Cell Communication Networks Using Response-Time Distributions. Cell Systems 6:355-367 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2018.01.016.
Reviews and editorials
Alachkar N, Opoku NK-DO, Monk NAM, Thurley K. Decoding cellular population dynamics through mechanistic modelling and statistical data analysis. npj Syst Biol Appl 12, 73 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41540-026-00751-x
Thurley K and Wolf J. Editorial overview: Mathematical modeling of disease processes. Curr Opin Syst Biol 42: 100554 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coisb.2025.100554
Steinheuer LM, Klümper N, Bald T, Thurley K. Untangling cell–cell communication networks and on-treatment response in immunotherapy. Curr Opin Syst Biol 40:100534 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coisb.2024.100534.
Research Articles - previous work
KT, Herbst C, Wesener F, Koller B, Wallach T, Maier B, Kramer A, Westermark PO. Principles for circadian orchestration of metabolic pathways. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 114(7):1572-77 (2017).
Diz-Muñoz A, KT, Chintamen S, Altschuler SJ, Wu LF, Fletcher DA, Weiner OD. Membrane Tension Acts Through PLD2 and mTORC2 to Limit Actin Network Assembly During Neutrophil Migration. PLoS Biol 14(6):e1002474 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002474
Ramirez M, Rajaram S, Steininger RJ, Osipchuk D, Roth MA, Morinishi LS, Evans L, Ji W, Hsu CH, KT, Wei S, Zhou A, Koduru PR, Posner BA, Wu LF, Altschuler SJ. Diverse drug-resistance mechanisms can emerge from drug-tolerant cancer persister cells. Nat Comm 7:10690 (2016).
KT*, Gerecht D, Friedmann E, Höfer T*. Three-Dimensional Gradients of Cytokine Signaling between T Cells. PLoS Comput Biol 11(4):e1004206 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004206
Lück S#, KT#, Thaben PF, Westermark PO. Rhythmic protein degradation shapes temporal compartmentalization. Cell Rep 9(2):741-51 (2014).
KT, Tovey SC, Moenke G, Prince VL, Meena A, Thomas AP, Skupin A, Taylor CW, Falcke M (2014). Reliable encoding of stimulus intensities within random sequences of intracellular Ca(2+) spikes. Sci Signal 7(331):ra59 (2014).
Moenke G, Falcke M, KT*. Hierarchic stochastic modeling applied to intracellular Ca(2+) signals. PLoS ONE 7: e51178. (2012).
KT, Ian F Smith, Stephen C Tovey, Colin W Taylor, Ian Parker, Martin Falcke. Timescales of IP3-evoked Ca2+ spikes emerge from Ca2+ puffs only at the cellular level. Biophys J 101:2638-44 (2011).
KT and Falcke M. Derivation of Ca(2+) signals starting from puffs reveals that pathway function is robust against cell variability and sensitive for control. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108:427-432 (2011).
Busse D, de la Rosa M, Hobiger K, KT, Flossdorf M, Scheffold A, Höfer T. Competing feedback loops shape IL-2 signaling between helper and regulatory T lymphocytes in cellular microenvironments. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107:3058-63 (2010).
Christine Nazaret, Margit Heiske, KT, Jean-Pierre Mazat. Mitochondrial energetic metabolism: a simplified model of TCA cycle with ATP production. J Theor Biol 258:455-64 (2009).
Reviews:
Skupin A and Thurley K. Calcium signaling: From single channels to pathways. Adv Exp Med Biol 740:531-51 (2012).
Thurley K, Skupin A, Thul R, Falcke M. Fundamental properties of Ca(2+) signals. Biochim Biophys Acta 1820(8):1185-94 (2012).
Thul R, Thurley K, Falcke M. Toward a predictive model of Ca2+ puffs. Chaos 19:037108 (2009)