Charlotte Esser

Charlotte Esser serves as Research Professor and Working Group Leader at the Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medicine Research (IUF) in Düsseldorf, Germany, where she directs immunotoxicology research focusing on the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) in skin and intestinal immunity. Her group investigates how environmental pollutants, dietary compounds, and microbial metabolites influence AHR signaling pathways.

Research interests center on AHR's dual roles in xenobiotic metabolism and immune regulation, with particular emphasis on skin barrier function, gut microbiome interactions, and sex-specific responses to toxins. Current projects examine dioxin effects on gut microbiota, the gut-skin axis in atopic dermatitis, and γδ T cell regulation in skin cancer defense. The group developed FlowSoFine™, a computational tool for microbiome analysis from flow cytometry data.

Article trends reveal consistent focus on AHR's immunomodulatory functions across multiple systems, with increasing attention to sex differences in toxicology and translational applications. Recent work bridges environmental exposures with clinical outcomes in autoimmune disorders, metabolic disease, and skin cancer.

Esser supervises the institute's central FACS and Cell Sorting Unit while mentoring postdocs Doreen Reichert and Nadine Pierchala, PhD candidates Hafssa Fraii, Alexander Meißner, and Simon Leander Sollberg, and master's student Ellen Franziska Rieger. Her projects receive funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Wilhelm Sander Foundation.

National collaborators include researchers from University of Bonn, University of Duisburg-Essen, and German Cancer Research Center, while international partnerships span South Korea, Poland, and Serbia. Current work integrates human skin models with immune cells to study non-melanoma skin cancer defense mechanisms.