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 2026 Keynote Speakers 

 Dr. Vivek Thacker working at Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg 

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The Thacker Lab combines infectious disease research, immunology, bioengineering, and systems biology to study chronic infections. Using human organ-on-chip and organoid models, together with animal models, advanced microscopy, and spatial omics, the lab investigates how pathogens interact with host tissues and develops new therapeutic strategies.A major research focus is tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The lab aims to understand how this slow-growing bacterium adapts to the lung microenvironment during the earliest stages of infection and how these interactions influence disease progression.

Their research integrates engineered human tissue models with animal studies in an iterative approach, allowing discoveries made in organoids to be validated in vivo while improving the models themselves. One key finding, published in 2023, showed that virulent M. tuberculosis forms highly organized supracellular cords whose mechanical properties help the bacteria resist deformation and exert forces on host cells and tissues, revealing an important link between tuberculosis pathogenesis and mechanobiology.

 

Dr Lorenz Adlung working at the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg

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The Adlung Lab works at the interface of metabolism and immunology, studying how the two systems shape each other in health and inflammatory disease. We pair high-throughput single-cell and multi-omics measurements with mechanistic mathematical models, from ordinary differential equations, agent-based models and flux-balance analysis, to move from descriptive data to predictive, testable mechanisms. Our questions span immunometabolism in adipose tissue (including lipid-associated macrophages as candidate cellular therapeutics), the intestinal epithelium and its microbiota, and inflammatory conditions such as colitis, obesity-associated inflammation and autoimmune hepatitis. A recurring thread is turning longitudinal, perturbation-based data, e.g., genetic knock-outs, microbiome depletion, adoptive cell transfer, into calibrated models that predict how cell populations respond to infection, inflammation, metabolic stress and carcinogenesis.

 

Prof. Dr. Dunja Bruder working at the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität (OVGU) in Magdeburg and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig

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Our research focuses on the immune regulation of respiratory infections, with particular emphasis on the lung epithelium as a central orchestrator of host defense. A major area of interest is how prior influenza virus infection alters pulmonary immunity and increases susceptibility to secondary bacterial infections, especially pneumococcal superinfections. We study alveolar type II epithelial cells, which are a primary target of influenza infection in the lower respiratory tract and play a key role in initiating antiviral and antibacterial immune responses. Using preclinical mouse models and molecular, immunological, and epigenetic analyses, we investigate how influenza reshapes epithelial inflammatory programs and leads to dysregulated responses in the infected lung.
We are also interested in viral co-infections, especially the interaction between influenza and SARS-CoV-2, to better understand how simultaneous or sequential infections affect disease course in the respiratory tract. In addition to studying fundamental mechanisms of pathogen defense in the lung, our work is embedded in a broader interest in basic mechanisms of mucosal immune regulation. In this context, we also investigate in preclinical mouse models how chronic intestinal inflammation exerts long-term local and systemic effects on susceptibility to subsequent infections.
Beyond fundamental research, we develop innovative strategies for the prevention and treatment of respiratory infections. This includes the preclinical characterization of mucosal vaccine approaches against influenza and SARS-CoV-2, as well as research on defective interfering particles as broad-spectrum antiviral agents and as safe mucosal vaccine candidates. Overall, our work aims to identify epithelial and immune mechanisms that can be targeted to prevent severe respiratory infections and their complications.

 

 

 

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