Holden Maecker

Holden T. Maecker, PhD, Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine; Director, Human Immune Monitoring Center; Director, Service Centers and Enabling Technologies, Stanford University 

Research Description: Dr. Maecker’s research has illuminated T cell response signatures and their association with protection from chronic pathogens and cancer. His lab has published a number of important papers on this topic, both alone and in collaboration with other groups. He has contributed to the field of assay standardization, with a particular emphasis on flow cytometry assays used for immune monitoring. Beginning with a classical 2005 publication on standardization of intracellular cytokine assays, his group has published influential publications in the area of assay comparisons, optimization, and reproducibility. He has recently contributed to the field of human systems immunology, with publications that emphasize the relationships between components of the human immune response, in collaboration with groups led by Drs. Mark Davis and Garry Fathman. Most recently, he worked with Dr. Bali Pulendran and others to perform systems immunology studies of COVID-19. For the past nine years, Dr. Maecker’s lab has gained extensive experience with CyTOF in collaboration with Dr. G. Nolan and others. In addition to being PI on multiple NIH, industry, and foundation grants, Dr. Maecker also directs the Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC), a Stanford core service laboratory, which performs standardized assays using flow cytometry/CyTOF, genomics, and immunoassay platforms. He serves as a core leader of the Diabetes Immune Monitoring Core (DIMC) in SDRC; with Dr. Everett Meyer he will oversee use of assays, data analysis and interpretation.

Selected relevant publications or presentations (Stanford DRC members in BOLD):

  1. Erkers T, Xie BJ, Kenyon LJ, Smith B, Rieck M, Jensen KP, Ji X, Basina M, Strober S, Negrin RS, Maecker HT, Meyer EH. High-parametric evaluation of human invariant natural killer T cells to delineate heterogeneity in allo- and autoimmunity. Blood. 2020 Mar 12;135(11):814-825. doi: 10.1182/blood.2019001903. PMID: 31935280; PMCID: PMC7068034. 

  2. Boralkar KA, Kobayashi Y, Amsallem M, Ataam JA, Moneghetti KJ, Cauwenberghs N, Horne BD, Knowlton KU, Maecker H, Kuznetsova T, Heidenreich PA, Haddad F. Value of Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio and Its Trajectory in Patients Hospitalized With Acute Heart Failure and Preserved Ejection Fraction. Am J Cardiol. 2020 Jan 15;125(2):229-235. doi: 10.1016/j.amjcard.2019.10.020. PMID: 31753313. 

  3. Lovelace P, Maecker HT. Multiparameter Intracellular Cytokine Staining. Methods Mol Biol. 2018; 1678:151-166. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-7346-0_9. PMID: 29071680.