Dr. Maria-Luisa Alegre, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine
University of Chicago

Dr. Alegre, MD, PhD is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago. She received her MD from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, where she specialized in Internal Medicine and Intensive Care, and her PhD in Immunology from the University of Chicago.

Her laboratory is interested in T cell responses in settings of transplantation, autoimmunity and cancer, with an emphasis on mouse models and emerging extensions onto clinical translation. A main focus of her laboratory is on T cell tolerance in transplantation and how infections and inflammatory events can affect induction or maintenance of tolerance. Her lab has found that transplantation tolerance can exist at different levels of robustness based on the number of mechanisms of T cell tolerance that are engaged, and that infections or inflammation can erode such tolerance. The impact of bacterial infections on transplant outcomes led more recent work demonstrating that the microbiota also influences immune responses to transplanted organs and can be manipulated to prolong graft survival.

Dr. Alegre has served as a Board member of the American Society of Transplantation. She has been elected to the Kunkel Society, the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. She is principal investigator on several NIH grants on transplantation immunology.