Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Immune-Mediated Diseases

The Fraunhofer CIMD is a cluster of excellence with the goal of developing individualized therapies for immune diseases from innovative ideas and identified targets. In interdisciplinary collaboration, the current gap between drug research and actual patient care is to be closed.

To this end, we combine the expertise of three Fraunhofer institutes active in the life sciences – the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI and the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM. To increase value creation, the core institutes are widely networked with other Fraunhofer partner institutes outside the life sciences, e.g. in the section of engineering and IT sciences. 

The Fraunhofer CIMD is dedicated to translational research. In other words, it transfers basic research into application. To this end, the Fraunhofer CIMD works in the four major fields of health research – drugs, diagnostics, devices and data, the 4D. These represent, in principle, four professional groups: doctors, scientists, engineers and computer scientists – all of whom work under one roof at the Fraunhofer CIMD. The expertise of the institutes is pooled and systematically cost-effective solutions are developed for a wide range of healthcare problems for the benefit of patients. Transdisciplinarity plays a key role here as a major driver of innovation, since doctors are working more and more closely and systematically with experts from other disciplines, such as engineers, natural scientists and computer scientists/mathematicians.

To date, this interdisciplinary approach has given rise to a large number of research projects, two real-world laboratories, two joint labs and five competence platforms at the Fraunhofer CIMD.

Download the brochure DE

Download the brochure EN