Heidelberg, 27.03.2019
Yesterday evening in Heidelberg, a full house welcomed Prof. Michael Platten, Chairman of the Department of Neurology, University Hospital Mannheim and Head CCU Neuroimmunology and Brain Tumor Immunology at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ).
As usual it was the occasion for life science companies as well for scientists from our research institutes, to meet and chat about latest news and achievements. The BioRN Lounge is the prime monthly networking event for BioRN members. It is the occasion for exchange, meeting and interaction in a very relaxed atmosphere with some drinks and food. As tradition, an invited speaker from the network presents and discusses with the participants, scientific trends, outbreaking techniques, outstanding research and more.
Prof. Michael Platten introduced us to the central nervous system (CNS) as an immune privileged organ, where immune responses are tightly controlled through an intensive cross-talk with the peripheral immune system despite the blood-brain barrier. On one hand, a paradigmatic autoimmune disease of the CNS is multiple sclerosis (MS), while a hallmark of intrinsic CNS tumors like gliomas is an active immunosuppression. The cellular and molecular mechanisms that are involved in the deregulation of CNS immunity are incompletely understood but important to both: too much immune response in MS and too little immune response in brain tumors. Prof. Platten’s group is thus interested in the control of CNS autoimmunity and immune therapeutic approaches to brain tumors.
After an extensive introduction about immunotherapy for gliomas, immune cell type involved and immunogenicity, he presented some clinical results of personalised vaccines. He could show that...
...therapies against glioma through personalised vaccines is a huge effort, but it is possible. It needs a lot of cross-talking and trust building with the regulatory authorities together with multicenter clinical trials.
Moreover Prof. Michael Platten was able to show the audience that the running clinical trials are designed in a way to be able to answer crucial scientific questions on the bedside. The answers obtained provides consequently feedback to the bench experiments, leading to an improved therapy.
Our next BioRN lounge will be on April 30 as usual in the Kasselhaus by Urban Kitchen and will host Laura Hausmanns, Managing Director of GELITA MEDICAL.
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