Prof. Gerd Geisslinger, Director of Fraunhofer ITMP and spokesperson for Fraunhofer CIMD, opened the event with a brief welcome and introduction to the day's topics. Prof. Frank Behrens, Deputy Director of Fraunhofer ITMP and Scientific Coordinator of Fraunhofer CIMD, guided the audience through the event. The first part of the event was dedicated to the topics of preclinical research, animal testing alternatives and mechanistic and metabolic findings on immune-mediated diseases.

Dr. Francesca Moretti, scientist in the field of preclinical safety and translational medicine at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, spoke about the strengths and weaknesses of in vitro models for preclinical safety testing. Dr. Karen Huber, a scientist in the Department of Microbiology at the Paul-Ehrlich Institute, then reported on the regulatory aspects of alternative methods to animal testing. In particular, she discussed how far we are currently in the field of alternative methods from a regulatory point of view, what the requirements are for an alternative method to be recognized by the regulatory authorities and what needs to be considered when developing an alternative method (e.g., relevance and standardization).

This was followed by two presentations dealing with the medical and, in particular, the mechanistic and metabolic aspects of certain diseases. Prof. Jörg Distler, MD, Director of the Clinic for Rheumatology and the Hiller Research Center at Düsseldorf University Hospital, explained in his lecture why patients with immune-mediated diseases suffer organ damage despite good therapy.

Prof. Alexander Pfeifer, Director of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Bonn, followed with a lecture on the connection between metabolic diseases and the immune system.

After the lunch break, Prof. Wolfgang Ahrens, Head of the Department of Epidemiological Methods and Causal Research at the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology, joined the event virtually and reported on the NAKO health study: participating institutions, recruitment of participants, study design, study conducted, documentation and plans for the future.

Dr. Friedrich Rippmann, Drug Discovery & Life Science Consultant, then introduced the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) with a focus on the use of AI in drug discovery and the identification of new targets.

In the next presentation, Dr. Christian Tidona, founder and director of BioMed X, introduced his institute and its strategy for solving biomedical issues.

In the next session, which started before the coffee break and continued after it, different projects within the Fraunhofer CIMD were highlighted.

Dr. Schara Safarian started with a presentation on a newly established method at Fraunhofer ITMP: single particle electron cryomicroscopy. This can be used successfully in biomedical research and for the development of drugs, particularly in the field of structural biology. 

Prof. Frank Behrens, Deputy Director of Fraunhofer ITMP and Prof. Jörn Kohlhammer, Head of the Information Visualization and Visual Analytics Department at Fraunhofer IGD, presented two living-labs founded at Fraunhofer CIMD: The living-lab 4D Clinic and the living-lab Data Intelligence. The living-lab 4D Clinic is all about interdisciplinary patient care: Under one roof you will find various medical disciplines (gastroenterology, dermatology, rheumatology), but also analytical laboratories that can process and analyze samples taken directly and reflect the results directly back to the doctors afterwards. In the living-lab data intelligence, the complex data collected as part of the 4D clinic (medical history, laboratory data, imaging data, data from medical examinations) will be merged, analyzed and visualized. Among other things, this should lead to improved diagnostic options, the ability to predict disease progression or therapy response, or to identify biomarkers. 

In the next presentation, Dario Antweiler, team leader of healthcare analytics at Fraunhofer IAIS, talked about a Fraunhofer CIMD project that aims to improve patient recruitment for clinical trials using foundation models.

Dr. Andreas Wieser, group leader and deputy head of the diagnostics laboratory at the LMU clinic, presented his work on the standardized evaluation of diagnostic test systems. Prof. Torsten Zuberbier, Head of Allergy Consequences Research at the Department of Dermatology, Venereology and Allergology at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, presented his work on "Developing new evidence-based guidelines: From clinical practice to medical care".

In the two poster sessions, which took place at lunchtime and in the afternoon of the event, 35 posters were presented and these were presented in 4 guided poster walks by the poster presenters in short talks. In addition to the organized poster walks, the participants also had time to exchange ideas individually at the posters.

The fifth Day of Immune Research was a successful continuation of networking, collaboration and cooperation opportunities along the 4D within the entire Fraunhofer-Society and beyond. We look forward to the next Day of Immune Research and hope to welcome many of the participants again.