Prof. Maecker-Kolhoff studied medicine in Göttingen and completed her practical training in England, Dresden and Oldenburg. In 1998, she completed her doctorate on investigations into the genetic detection of leukemia cells in bone marrow stem cells in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Prof. Maecker-Kolhoff began her clinical training in internal hematology and oncology at the Großhadern Hospital in Munich. After a three-year research stay at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, she moved to the Pediatric Clinic of Hannover Medical School as a postgraduate assistant. In addition to pediatric haematology and oncology, she acquired in-depth knowledge of pediatric transplant medicine and intensive medical care for premature and newborn babies. Since qualifying as a specialist in 2006, she has worked in the Department of Pediatric Haematology and Oncology, focusing on the care of children and adolescents during and after stem cell transplantation. Prof. Maecker-Kolhoff works as a pediatric hematologist and oncologist in the on-call oncology service of the Children's Hospital and cares for patients with hematological and oncological diseases as well as immunodeficiencies.
Prof. Maecker-Kolhoff is scientifically interested in the interactions between tumor cells and the immune system. She is investigating the question of why tumor cells are not recognized and rejected by the immune system and is trying to develop methods to make tumor recognition by the immune system more efficient. In 2009, she completed her habilitation with a thesis on defects in the cellular anti-tumor immune response. Since 2002, her work in this field has focused on lymphoma diseases after organ transplantation (PTLD, post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease) in children. Her work is integrated into the BMBF-funded "Integrated Research and Treatment Center Transplantation (IFB-Tx)". She is head of the pediatric PTLD registry and study coordinator for the multicenter therapy study Ped-PTLD Pilot 2005. In collaboration with Prof. Eiz-Vesper (Institute of Transfusion Medicine), she is developing new cell-based therapeutic approaches for virus-induced infections and tumors after transplantation.
A lot of current information on the analysis of virus-specific T cells in patients, the selection of suitable T cell donors and the production of virus-specific T cells for adoptive transfer can be found at the MHH at alloCELL.