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SFB 650:  Cellular Approaches for the Suppression of Unwanted Immune Reactions - From Bench to Bedside

Subject Area Medicine
Term from 2005 to 2016
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5486264
 
Diseases caused by the immune system such as autoimmunity, allergy and transplant rejection have major medical and economic implications. Presently available treatments are restricted to unspecific immuno-suppressants, i.e. drugs, which down-regulate the activities of the immune system. However, these drugs are limited in their effectiveness und are associated with significant side effects, long-term application cycles and - last but not least - very high costs.
This Collaborative Research Centre aims at developing new approaches to suppressing unwanted immune reactions selectively and to further develop concepts into medical treatments. In particular, it will be examined whether future therapies can utilise the cellular control mechanisms of the immune systems itself.
Several project groups investigate how regulatory lymphocytes suppress inflammatory immune reactions, and whether there are ways to use them for treating patients affected by autoimmune diseases or transplantation surgery. Other project groups are seeking to clarify under which conditions such regulatory cells are generated, which factors - substances synthesised or isolated from other organisms - support their development, which features are required to make them highly effective in vivo, and which molecular pathways are involved in the suppression of the immune reactions. The objective is to find ways either to increase the formation of those protective cells in vivo, or to use them for therapeutic treatments after isolation from patients and expansion in vitro. In addition, new ways to control the success or failure of treatment of patients by such novel therapies will be evaluated.
Project groups of this Collaborative Research Centre search for new treatments to be applied to rheumatic diseases, multiple sclerosis, transplantation medicine and allergies. Their common vision is the idea to use natural tolerance mechanisms - the ability of the immune system to regulate itself - for therapeutic purposes, i.e. to switch off unwanted immune reactions selectively and to return to a lasting immunological balance.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

Applicant Institution shared FU Berlin and HU Berlin through:
Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
 
 

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