Dr. Magdalini Lourda

Dr. Magdalini Lourda is a Senior Research Specialist and Docent in Immunology at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. She leads the team “Innate Immune System in Infection, Inflammation and Cancer” within the Systems Virology Lab. She holds a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and subsequently undertook postdoctoral research in cancer immunology at Karolinska Institutet. She was appointed Assistant Professor in 2015 and became Docent in 2026.

Her research focuses on how innate immune cells contribute to disease pathogenesis, with particular emphasis on granulocytes and mononuclear phagocytes. Her team investigates how immune cell heterogeneity and intercellular communication shape inflammation, tissue damage and long-term disease outcomes. Her research spans inflammatory skin diseases, high-burden viral infections and inflammatory neoplasms such as Langerhans cell histiocytosis, including its neurodegenerative complications. She aims to identify disease-specific mechanisms and biomarkers that can inform diagnosis and treatment. Her work combines high-dimensional spectral flow cytometry, single-cell analyses, extracellular vesicle profiling, advanced model systems and functional studies. Her research has been supported primarily by the Swedish Childhood Cancer Fund, the Dr Åke Olsson Foundation for Haematological Research and Karolinska Institutet.

Alongside her research, Dr. Lourda has supervised doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers and contributes to teaching and the organisation of doctoral courses in immunology and virology. She serves on the Department of Laboratory Medicine’s Doctoral Board and the Scientific Committee of the Histiocyte Society and is a member of the European consortium for histiocytosis (ECHO). She is also a member of the coordination team of the EU Horizon Europe COMBAT consortium, where she leads the immunology work on myeloid cells and lymphocytes.

Within the MERIT Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network, Dr. Lourda is a co-supervisor of DC14, “Mechanisms of PLpro-mediated host-cell reprogramming in SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistence”, alongside principal supervisor Dr. Soham Gupta and co-supervisor Dr. Ujjwal Neogi.