Dr. Tamara Tilburgs obtained her Ph.D. degree in Reproductive Immunology at Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands in the lab of Dr. Frans Claas, where she studied decidual T cell responses in healthy human pregnancies. She conducted a postdoctoral fellowship and held an Instructor position in Dr. Jack Strominger’s laboratory at the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University, where she focused on the molecular mechanisms of immune tolerance by HLA-G+ extravillous trophoblasts.
Currently, Dr. Tilburgs’ is an Assistant Professor at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where she investigates how maternal immune cells at the maternal-fetal interface establish tolerance to fetal antigens while at the same time maintaining immunity to viral and bacterial infections. She has published over 25 peer-reviewed papers in the area of reproductive immunology with a more specific scientific production in the field of immune regulatory mechanisms by HLA-G+ extravillous trophoblasts and decidual regulatory T cells as well as decidual NK cell and decidual effector T cell responses to placental and viral antigens.