Andrea Cerutti

Andrea Cerutti

Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques

Life & Medical Sciences

Andrea Cerutti, MD, PhD, is an ICREA Research Professor since 2010 and leads the B Cell Biology Group at FIMIM, which is a research center located in the PRBB complex. He serves as grant reviewer for the European Research Council and the National Institutes of Health, and as manuscript reviewer for journals such as Cell, Cell Host&Microbe, Science, Nature, Immunity, Nature Immunology, Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cell Reports, etc. He is a member of The American Society for Clinical Investigation, The American Association of Immmunologists, and The Henry Kunkel Society and serves as Associate Editor of the journal Mucosal Immunology. He contributed to the organization of 2014 and 2016 Keystone Symposia meetings, published 148 research articles in immunology journals, and lectures in international meetings as well as American and European universities. His h-index is 54.

Research interests

The splenic marginal zone and gut mucosa can be viewed as interfaces between the immune system and the circulation or external environment, respectively. My group studies how B cells strategically positioned in these “frontline” areas make antibodies against circulating or intraluminal antigens, including intestinal microbes. We are particularly interested in the mechanism whereby splenic stromal cells or splenic innate immune cells, including neutrophils, dendritic cells, macrophages and innate lymphoid cells, facilitate the activation of splenic marginal zone B cells. We are also analyzing how intestinal B cells generate antibodies to commensal bacteria and how these antibodies shape the composition of the gut microbiota. Finally, we study the alterations of B cells in patients with primary antibody deficiency, including selective IgA deficiency and common variable deficiency. Our research is relevant to infections, inflammation, autoimmunity, immunodeficiency, and vaccine development.

Selected publications

– Uzzan M, Martin JC, Mesin L, Livanos AE, Castro-Dopico T, Huang R, Petralia F, Magri G, Kumar S, Zhao Q, Rosenstein AK, Tokuyama M, Sharma K, Ungaro R, Kosoy R, Jha D, Fischer J, Singh H, Keir ME, Ramamoorthi N, Gorman WEO, Cohen BL, Rahman A, Cossarini F, Seki A, Leyre L, Vaquero ST, Gurunathan S, Grasset EK, Losic B, Dubinsky M, Greenstein AJ, Gottlieb Z, Legnani P, George J, Irizar H, Stojmirovic A, Brodmerkel C, Kasarkis A, Sands BE, Furtado G, Lira SA, Tuong ZK, Ko HM, Cerutti A, Elson CO, Clatworthy MR, Merad M, Suárez-Fariñas M, Argmann C, Hackney JA, Victora GD, Randolph GJ, Kenigsberg E, Colombel JF & Mehandru S 2022, ‘Ulcerative colitis is characterized by a plasmablast-skewed humoral response associated with disease activity‘, Nature Medicine, vol. 28, no. 4, pp 766-779.

– Yang C, Chen-Liaw A, Spindler MP, Tortorella D, Moran TM, Cerutti A & Faith JJ 2022, ‘Immunoglobulin A antibody composition is sculpted to bind the self gut microbiome‘, Science Immunology, vol. 7, no. 73, eabg3208.

– Neuman H, Arrouasse J, Kedmi M, Cerutti A, Magri G & Mehr R 2022, ‘IgZTree, a toolkit for immunoglobulin gene linkage tree-based analysis, reveals CDR3s are crucial for selection analysis’, Frontiers in Immunology vol. 13, 822834.

Cerutti A, Filipska M, Marcos Fa X & Tachó-Piñot R 2022, ‘Impact of the mucosal milieu on antibody responses to allergens’, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, vol. 150, no. 3, pp 503-512.

Selected research activities

16th Congress of the Catalan Society of Immunology, Barcelona, Spain; Invited speaker; “Functional cosstalk between gut IgA and systemic IgG”