Franca trained at the University of Padova, Italy, and then as a Postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Ron Germain at NIH, USA. She then joined the Basel Institute for Immunology in Basel, Switzerland, where she became interested in antigen presentation by dendritic cells in vivo. Since 1994 Franca has been leading the Immune Cell Biology group at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in Wellington, NZ. Her current work employs cellular and molecular technologies to examine dendritic cell diversity during the initiation of CD4+ helper T cell responses, with a particular focus on allergic immunity.
ACS CONFERENCE 2026 