About us
The symposium From Innate to Adaptive Immunity – a question of memory is being jointly organised by the Deutsches Rheuma‐Forschungszentrum Berlin (DRFZ), a Leibniz Institute, the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology. The symposium recognises the transition of the leadership of the DRFZ, highlighting immunological memory, a pillar of research established by Andreas Radbruch, together with the new line of research on inflammasomes and innate immunity that Eicke Latz introduces to the DRFZ since May 2023.
During the two days, some of the best minds in immunology from around the world will come together to discuss the role of innate and adaptive immunity in the context of chronic inflammation. The symposium will provide established and early career researchers with a unique opportunity for cementing new cross-disciplinary collaborations, with a focus on exploring new diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities for chronic inflammatory disorders.
About the organisers of the symposium
Eicke Latz
... has been Scientific Director of the DRFZ and Professor of Experimental Rheumatology at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin since May 2023. His research focuses on how the innate immune system maintains health and under what circumstances it can promote disease.
Andreas Radbruch
... was Scientific Director of the DRFZ from 1996 to 2023. He has contributed significantly to today's understanding of how immunological memory is organised to maintain protective immunity on the one hand and to promote chronic inflammation on the other. His research focuses on understanding the lifestyle of memory cells in interaction with their microenvironment.
Gerhard Krönke
... has been Director of the Rheumatology Department Berlin Mitte of the Charité since April 2023. His research aims at understanding the molecular mechanisms leading to the development of inflammatory autoimmune diseases and to develop novel strategies for their diagnosis and treatment.
Arturo Zychlinsky
... has been Head of the Department of Cellular Microbiology since 2001 and is Managing Director of the MPI-IB. He made several fundamental contributions to the understanding of infection biology.
About the organising research institutions
The German Rheumatology Research Center (DRFZ), a Leibniz institute, is the only non-university research institution in Germany focused on researching rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases. Research into rheumatic diseases at the DRFZ covers basic rheumatology, investigating the cellular and molecular origins and maintenance mechanisms of inflammation, diagnostic and translational rheumatology, transferring the knowledge from basic science into clinics, as well as epidemiology and health services research.
Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe. The Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology in Berlin Mitte is a close cooperation partner of the DRFZ, with many joint research groups and research projects.
The Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology (MPI-IB) aims to understand infections by viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi and worms. MPIIB and DRFZ thus complement each other perfectly, with research into the immune system in the defence against pathogens on the one hand and research into misdirected immunity in the case of chronic inflammation on the other.