Selected publications:

1. Puzek, B., Wratil, P. R., Janke, C., Le Thi, T. G., Rubio-Acero, R., Lupoli, G., Schoof, I. C., Stern, M., Zhelyazkova, A., Rech, J., Choukér, A., Koletzko, B., Wieser, A., Török, H. P., Castelletti, N., Keppler, O. T., Geldmacher, C., Hornung, V., Zeggini, E., Adorjan, K., Hoelscher, M., Koletzko, S., & Kim-Hellmuth, S. (2025). Genetic variation in HLA, IGKV and HHEX loci influence mRNA vaccine-induced long-lasting humoral protection against COVID-19. medRxiv, 2025.10.21.25337971. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.21.25337971

2. Franz, T. M., Punathil, R. K., Soto-Beasley, A. I., Strongosky, A., Walton, R. L., Kim-Hellmuth, S., Springer, W., Dulski, J., Ross, O. A., Jaramillo-Koupermann, G., Alarcon, F., & Wszolek, Z. K. (2025). Screening for PRKN and PINK1 mutations in Ecuadorian patients with early-onset Parkinson's Disease. Neurologia i neurochirurgia polska, 59(1), 56–61.

3. Santos-Peral, A., Zaucha, M., Nikolova, E., Yaman, E., Puzek, B., Winheim, E., Goresch, S., Scheck, M. K., Lehmann, L., Dahlstroem, F., Karimzadeh, H., Thorn-Seshold, J., Jia, S., Luppa, F., Pritsch, M., Butt, J., Metz-Zumaran, C., Barba-Spaeth, G., Endres, S., Kim-Hellmuth, S., Waterboer, T., Krug, A. B., & Rothenfusser, S. Basal T cell activation predicts yellow fever vaccine response independently of cytomegalovirus infection and sex-related immune variations. Cell Rep Med, 6(2), 101946 (2025).

4. Schmidt, A., Casadei, N., Brand, F., Demidov, G., Vojgani, E., Abolhassani, A., Aldisi, R., Butler-Laporte, G., DeCOI host genetics group, Alawathurage, T. M., Augustin, M., Bals, R., Bellinghausen, C., Berger, M. M., Bitzer, M., Bode, C., Boos, J., Brenner, T., Cornely, O. A., Eggermann, T., Erber, J., Feldt ,T., Fuchsberger, C., Gagneur, J., Göpel, S., Haack, T., Häberle, H., Hanses, F., Heggemann, J., Hehr, U., Hellmuth, J. C., Herr, C., Hinney, A., Hoffmann, P., Illig, T., Jensen, B. O., Keitel, V., Kim-Hellmuth, S., [...],  Motameny, S., Nothnagel, M., Riess, O., Schulte, E. C., & Ludwig, K. U. Systematic assessment of COVID-19 host genetics using whole genome sequencing data. PLoS Pathog 20(12) (2024).

5. Nussbaum, C. & Kim-Hellmuth, S. Unlocking the genetic influence on milk variation and its potential implication for infant health. Cell Genom. 4, 100676 (2024).

6. Kasela, S., Aguet, F., Kim-Hellmuth, S., Brown, B. C., Nachun, D. C., Tracy, R. P., Durda, P., Liu, Y., Taylor, K. D., Johnson, W. C., Berg, D. V. D., Gabriel, S., Gupta, N., Smith, J. D., Blackwell, T. W., Rotter, J. I., Ardlie, K. G., Manichaikul, A., Rich, S. E., Barr, R. G. & Lappalainen, T. Interaction molecular QTL mapping discovers cellular and environmental modifiers of genetic regulatory effects. Am J Hum Genet 111(1) (2024).

7. Kerimov, N., Tambets, R., Hayhurst, J. D., Rahu, I., Kolberg, P., Raudvere, U., Kuzmin, I., Chowdhary, A., Vija, A., Teras, H. J., Kanai, M., Ulirsch, J., Ryten, M., Hardy, J., Guelfi, S., Trabzuni, D., Kim-Hellmuth, S., Rayner, W., Finucane, H., Peterson, H., Mosaku, A., Parkinson, H. & Alasoo, K. eQTL Catalogue 2023: New datasets, X chromosome QTLs, and improved detection and visualisation of transcript-level QTLs. PLoS Genet. 19, e1010932 (2023).

8. Flynn, E., Tsu, A., Kasela, S., Kim-Hellmuth, S., Aguet, F., Ardlie, K. G., Bussemaker, H. J., Mohammadi, P. & Lappalainen, T. Transcription factor regulation of eQTL activity across individuals and tissues. Plos Genet 18 (2022).

9. Brandt, M. K., Kim-Hellmuth, S., Ziosi, M., Gokden, A., Wolman, A., Lam, N., Recinos, Y., Hornung, V. K., Schumacher, J. & Lappalainen, T. An autoimmune disease risk variant: A trans master regulatory effect mediated by IRF1 under immune stimulation? PLoS Genet. 17(7), (2021). 

10. Warnat-Herresthal, S., Schultze, H., Shastry, K. L., Manamohan, S., Mukherjee, S., Garg, V., Sarveswara, R., Händler, K., Pickkers, P., Aziz, N. A., Ktena, S., Tran, F., Bitzer, M., Ossowski, S., Casadei, N., Herr, C., Petersheim, D., Behrends, U., Kern, F., Fehlmann, T., Schommers, P., Lehmann, C., Augustin, M., Rybniker, J., Altmüller, J., Mishra, N., Bernardes, J. P., Krämer, B., Bonaguro, L., Schulte-Schrepping, J., Domenico, E. D., Siever, C., Kraut, M., Desai, M., Monnet, B., Saridaki, M., Siegel, C. M., Drews, A., Nuesch-Germano, M., Theis, H., Heyckendorf, J., Schreiber, S., Kim-Hellmuth, S., […], Deutsche COVID-19 Omics Initiative (DeCOI), Giamarellos-Bourboulis, E. J., Kox, M., Becker, M., Cheran, S., Woodacre, M. S., Goh, E. L. & Schultze, J. L. Swarm Learning for decentralized and confidential clinical machine learning. Nature 1–7 (2021). 

11. de Goede, O. M., Nachun, D. C., Ferraro, N. M., Gloudemans, M. J., Rao, A. S., Smail, C., Eulalio, T. Y., Aguet, F., Ng, B., Xu, J., Barbeira, A. N., Castel, S. E., Kim-Hellmuth, S., Park, Y., Scott, A. J., Strober, B. J., GTEx Consortium, Brown, C. D., Wen, X., Hall, I. M., Battle, A., Lappalainen, T., Im, H. K., Ardlie, K. G., Mostafavi, S., Quertermous, T., Kirkegaard, K. & Montgomery, S. B. Population-scale tissue transcriptomics maps long non-coding RNAs to complex disease. Cell (2021).

12. GTEx Consortium#. The GTEx Consortium atlas of genetic regulatory effects across human tissues. Science 369, 1318-1330 (2020). #Lead analyst: Kim-Hellmuth, S.

   >> Science cover and Introduction to Special Issue

   >> Press releases: here and here

13. Kim-Hellmuth, S.†*, Aguet, F.*, Oliva, M., Muñoz-Aguirre, M., Kasela, S., Wucher, V., Castel, S. E., Hamel, A. R., Viñuela, A., Roberts, A. L., Mangul, S., Wen, X., Wang, G., Barbeira, A. N., Garrido-Martin, D., Nadel, B., Zou, Y., Bonazzola, R., Quan, J., Brown, A., Martinez-Perez, A., Soria, J. M., GTEx Consortium, Getz, G., Dermitzakis, E., Small, K. S., Stephens, M., Xi, H. S., Im, H. K., Guigó, R., Segre, A. V., Stranger, B. E., Ardlie, K. G. & Lappalainen, T.  Cell type specific genetic regulation of gene expression across human tissues. Science 369 (2020). 

   >> Featured in 'This week in Science'

   >> Press releases: here and here 

14. Oliva, M.*, Muñoz-Aguirre, M.*, Kim-Hellmuth, S.*, Wucher, V., Gewirtz, A., Cotter, D., Parsana, P., Kasela, S., Balliu, B., Viñuela, A., Castel, S. E., Mohammadi, P., Aguet, F., Zou, Y., Khramtsova, E., Skol, A., Garrido-Martin, D., Reverter, F., Brown, A., Evans, P., Gamazon, E., Payne, A., Bonazzola, R., Barbeira, A. N., Hamel, A. R., Martinez-Perez, A., Soria, J. M., GTEx Consortium, Pierce, B., Stephens, M., Eskin, E., Dermitzakis, E., Segre, A. V., Im, H. K., Engelhardt, B., Ardlie, K. G., Montegomery, S., Battle, A., Lappalainen, T., Guigó, R. & Stranger, B. E. The impact of sex on gene expression and its genetic regulation across human tissues. Science 369 (2020). 

   >> Science Perspective and selected media coverage: Deutschlandfunk Forschung aktuell

   >> Press releases: here and here 

15. Demanelis, K., Jasmine, F., Chen, L. S., Chernoff, M., Tong, L., Delgado, D., Zhang, C., Shinkle, J., Sabarinathan, M., Lin, H., Ramirez, E., Oliva, M., Kim-Hellmuth, S., Stranger, B. E., Lai, T.-P., Aviv, A., Ardlie, K. G., Aguet, F., Ahsan, H., GTEx Consortium, Doherty, J. A., Kibriya, M. G. & Pierce, B. L. Determinants of telomere length across human tissues. Science 369 (2020). 

16. Kim-Hellmuth, S.†, Bechheim, M., Pütz, B., Mohammadi, P., Nédélec, Y., Giangreco, N., Becker, J., Kaiser, V., Fricker, N., Beier, E., Boor, P., Castel, S. E., Nöthen, M. M., Barreiro, L. B., Pickrell, J. K., Müller-Myhsok, B., Lappalainen, T., Schumacher, J. & Hornung, V. Genetic regulatory effects modified by immune activation contribute to autoimmune disease associations. Nat Commun 8, 266 (2017).

17. Kim-Hellmuth, S. & Lappalainen, T. Concerted Genetic Function in Blood Traits. Cell 167, 1167–1169 (2016).

18. Hornung, V., Ellegast, J., Kim, S., Brzózka, K., Jung, A., Kato, H., Poeck, H., Akira, S., Conzelmann, K.-K., Schlee, M., Endres, S. & Hartmann, G. 5'-Triphosphate RNA is the ligand for RIG-I. Science 314, 994–997 (2006).

†Corresponding author, *Equally contributing author

Complete list of publications

Open positions:

We are actively looking to expand our group at all levels (postdocs, senior and junior staff scientists, graduate students, interns). Given our interdisciplinary work we offer both dry and wet lab projects and are looking for highly motivated individuals with diverse scientific backgrounds (immunologists, clinicians, computational biologists, statistical geneticists, data scientists).

• Fascinated by the immune system and its complexity and diversity among us human beings?
• Driven to better understand genetic gene regulation and its role in immune-related diseases?
• Interested in applying cutting-edge genomics technologies and analytical approaches to answer some of the pressing questions in genetics & genomics and immunology?
• Enjoy working in an interdisciplinary and collaborative team surrounded by a vibrant scientific environment?

Then look no more!

Our group is dedicated to better understand the genetic basis of human immune response variation and translate those insights into the clinic to improve every day medical decision-making. Located both at Helmholtz Munich and the LMU University hospital we are embedded and collaborate in a wide scientific network, in particular with the Computational Health Center, the Department of Pediatrics, the Biomedical Center, the Gene Center Munich and of course nationally and internationally. 

If you are interested in discussing projects or job opportunities please get in touch via email. This can be even very early before your potential start or before major conferences to meet informally.

Diversity and inclusivity are key values in our group. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds especially from underrepresented and underprivileged backgrounds.