iFIT - Cluster of Excellence

🥳And the great news keeps coming in! Another recognition of our spokespersons Prof. Dr. med. Juliane S. Walz outstanding scientific work! 🏆She was recently awarded the SWISS BRIDGE Award 2024! She shares the award of 500,000 Swiss francs with Tobias Weiss from Universitätsspital Zürich 🇨🇭. The prize money of 250,000 Swiss francs each supports the implementation of two clinical studies investigating new, promising approaches to treating cancer with immunotherapies. 🔬The study by Juliane and her team focuses on research into a so-called bispecific antibody. This antibody, which was developed by 👨🔬 Professors Helmut Salih and Gundram Jung in Tübingen, is designed to specifically bind to two different proteins located on different cell types. One protein is located on the surface of immune cells, so-called T cells, and activates them. The other protein is found on tumor cells as well as in the surrounding tissue and blood vessels, which means that both structures can be specifically targeted by the antibody. 🤞 The researchers hope that this dual effect will be particularly effective in combating the tumor. 🎯The aim of the clinical trial is to test the safety and efficacy of the antibody in patients with metastatic cancer of the upper gastrointestinal tract, breast and sarcoma. 👏 Congratulations Juliane on this great recognition! 🍀 Wishing you and your team much success with conducting the clinical trial!

😲 🤩 Full house during the latest episode of our Seminar Series with special guest Mallika Singh from Revolution Medicines! After a short introduction by our spokesperson and host Lars Zender, Mallika gave our audience a great presentation on the development of so-called tri-complex pan-Ras inhibitors which are seen as a potential “game changer” in the therapy of Ras-driven tumors. 🙏 Thank you very much for sharing your data and experience! ➡ For those of you who missed Mallikas talk, there will be the next opportunity to listen to her at the 36th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium in Barcelona! She will give a poster presentation on Combination of RAS(ON) Multi-Selective and G12D-Selective Inhibitors Improves Antitumor Activity and Enhances Antitumor Immunity in Preclinical Models of KRAS G12D-Driven Cancers on Thursday!

🥳And another one! 👏 #Congratulations to Benjamin Ruf, M.D. on receiving his second #award this year! 🔬 During his #postdoctoral #research, Benjamin focused on elucidating the role of mucosa-associated invariant (MAIT) T cells in the context of #cancer, particularly liver cancer. In his most recent work on hepatocellular #carcinoma (HCC), he used an AI-supported systems biology approach to uncover a particularly important role of these cells, which could be important regulators in the body's own defense against tumors. Instead, however, they are functionally silenced in the liver #tumor microenvironment through interaction with tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) that carry the immune checkpoint molecule PD-L1 on their surface. This work suggests that MAIT cells are potential new target cells for immune checkpoint therapy of HCC. 🏆 The German Society for #Immunology awards the Fritz and Ursula Melchers Postdoctoral Prize to one of its members once a year. The prize, endowed with € 2,000, is awarded to postdoctoral researchers up to 35 years of age for their work to date in the field of immunology.

😊 We are looking forward to a great joint lecture together with our partner institution TüCAD2! This time with very special guest speaker Mallika Singh, Vice President Translational Research at 🇺🇸 Revolution Medicines! 💡 She will give an interesting talk with the title "Targeting the oncogenic state of RAS with tri-complex inhibitors" 🔬 Mallika Singh and her team have designed a series of tri-complex inhibitors that specifically target the GTP-bound, active state of RAS (RAS(ON)). These small molecule inhibitors bind non-covalently to an abundant intracellular protein, cyclophilin A (CypA). The resulting binary complex selectively engages RAS(ON), forming a tri-complex that sterically inhibits RAS interaction with downstream effectors. She will describe the mechanism of action of these investigational agents and the preclinical profiles that support their clinical evaluation in RAS-addicted cancers as monotherapies and combination therapy regimens as RAS(ON) inhibitor doublets. 🤗 All researchers from Universitätsklinikum Tübingen & Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen are happy to join this talk! 📅 October 22, 2024 🕛 12:30pm (CEST) ℹ https://lnkd.in/e94_MQMg

🎉 Congratulations to our spokesperson Prof. Dr. med. Juliane S. Walz! She recently received the Doktor Robert Pfleger Foundation Research Award 2024 for her achievements regarding peptid-based immunotherapy of tumors and infections! The award is endowed with 50,000 € and is awarded every two years. 🏆 Ms. Walz was presented with the award at a ceremony attended by Rainer Schmidt, Deputy Chairman of the Foundation Board, Florian Luderschmid, District President of Upper Franconia and scientific advisor Prof. Dr. Angelika Vollmar. 🔬 The Dr. Pfleger Arzneimittel GmbH is the founder's life's work. The foundation honors researchers who have made a significant contribution to basic medical research and have thus served society in a responsible and sustainable manner. 🏥 At Universitätsklinikum Tübingen, Prof. Walz is Medical Director of the Clinical Cooperations Unit Translational Immunology and Head of the Department of Peptide-based Immunotherapy.

🤗 This morning our iFIT General Assembly 2024 took place! Although we still have almost three months left, it was time to look back at our achievements of the past months. After working so hard on our prolongation proposal, our spokespersons Prof. Dr. med. Juliane S. Walz & Lars Zender have prepared our members for the next stage to defend our proposal at the beginning of next year. 💪 For our Cluster, 2024 has been a very succesfull year so far, with lots of highlights, especially in terms of 3rd party funding, excellent papers and great professorial appointments. 🗳 But our Assembly was also the time to elect new representatives for our sections. We therefore would like to congratulate Josef Leibold & Liudmila Andreeva who have been elected as representative (former) and deputy (latter) for Early Career. Our new deputy representative for Equal Opportunities will be Lisa Sevenich, joining Judith Feucht. Our Core Units will be led by Christian M. Schürch & Mathias Heikenwaelder, our new Associate Investigator representatives are Saskia Biskup & André F. Martins. Our future Animal Use and Care representatives will be Carsten Calaminus & Sandra Beer-Hammer. Our general Principal Investigator representatives are Christian la Fougère, Helmut Salih & Prof. Dr. Stefan Laufer and our female PI representatives will be Birgit S. & Leticia Quintanilla-Fend. Last but not least Matthias Schwab was elected as PI representative for non-university research institutions. 🔮 We are looking forward what the future has in store for us and wish our newly appointed representatives a good start!

🥳What a great way to celebrate German Unity Day! 🧒Almost 60 kids visited the labs at our fellow institute Werner Siemens Imaging Center as part of the 🐭 "Türen auf mit der Maus Tag", a nationwide open day for children to discover what happens behind the doors of institutions, companies or organizations. 🤔How complicated is it to develop novel #cancer #therapies and how can we use next level #microscopy tools to adjust the outcome of our therapies? 💡The kids received answers to those questions and had lots of fun spending the day as 👩🔬🧑🔬 "junior scientists" in our labs! 🙏A huge thank you to our member Bettina Weigelin and all our members involved in planning and realizing this great event and especially to all kids who participated! 💪 #TürenaufmitderMaus #Scicomm #PublicEngagement

#TürenAuf mit der Maus! We are ready 😊 Final preparations are complete, and we are looking forward to welcome the Junior Scientists to the Werner Siemens Imaging Center at Universitätsklinikum Tübingen and iFIT - Cluster of Excellence tomorrow! They will meet our scientists from all over the world and perform some cool imaging experiments. I hope they will have as much fun as we had preparing for this day! 🔬🧪🧫🧬🩻

😊 We are looking forward to our next episode of our iFIT #Seminar Series! This time with guest speaker Francisco Barriga, 👨🔬Research Group Leader at 🇪🇸Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO). 💡 He will give an interesting talk with the title "Dissecting the function of copy number alterations in #cancer" 🔬 Cancer genomes have chromosomal #alterations that increase or decrease the dosage of large genomic regions. These pervasive genetic events, termed copy number alterations (CNAs), have cancer-specific patterns and clinical correlates, yet their biological effects remain poorly understood. Barriga and his team have developed #genome engineering approaches to create copy number alterations de novo to study their function in cancer cells. His group is particularly interested in CNAs as mechanisms of immune evasion and drivers of intra-#tumor heterogeneity. 🤗 All researchers from Universitätsklinikum Tübingen & Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen are happy to join this talk! 📅 October 1, 2024 🕛 12:00pm (CEST) ℹ https://lnkd.in/eBgrEHrW