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On June 27th and 28th 2019 the International Symposium "Translational Immunology - From Target to Therapy VI" will be held at the beautiful historical venue of the Juliusspital in Würzburg, Germany.

The Symposium is organized by the young physician-scientists in training of the Else-Kröner-Forschungskolleg for Interdisciplinary Translational Immunology. They are ten selected and associated fellows from different medical disciplines (cardiology, dermatology, gynecology, hematology-oncology, internal medicine, urology and nuclear-medicine). On top of their training in their respective medical fields they participate in a structured program for translational immunological research. As part of their program they are also organizing an annual symposium, "Translational Immunology - From Target to Therapy". At this event their is the opportunity to listen to leaders in translational immunology research from all over the world and to present and discuss their work with these international experts in immunodiagnostics and -therapy.

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In May 2018, Rudolf Werner was awarded the Marc-Tetalman Award, the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's Young Investigators Prize, in the amount of 5000 US dollars. The associate collegiate of the Else-Kröner-Forschungskollegs Würzburg has specialized in the imaging of metabolic processes of the heart using the latest generation of small animal positron emission tomography (PET) devices. Werner uses PET technology primarily in animal models based on inflammation of the heart muscle (e.g. myocarditis). PET technology will later be used to investigate whether the natural course of such myocarditis can be traced using radiotracers and whether the success of a therapy can be visualised using PET. In addition, another potential application of this technique would be the monitoring of side effects of immunotherapy, e.g. in PD1-mediated myocarditis, which is rare but usually fatal. PET technology could thus make a decisive contribution to identifying high-risk patients at an early stage and to offering personalised therapy options.

Rudolf Werner works as an physician at the Clinic for Nuclear Medicine at the University Hospital Würzburg (Director: Professor Dr. A. Buck). He is currently doing research at the renowned Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, USA. In January 2017, he started a 2-year research rotation at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, USA, which will last until the end of 2018, as part of EU funding under the Horizon 2020 programme (Marie Sklodowska Curie measure). Werner will then receive EU funding for a further year to apply the techniques he has learnt at the German Centre for Heart Failure (Deutsches Zentrum für Herzinsuffizienz, DKFZ) and thus ensure the transfer of knowledge to Würzburg.

Werner has already achieved some successes with his research work: In June 2017 he won the "Young Investigator Award" in the category "Basic Cardiovascular Science" at the annual meeting of the American Society for Nuclear Medicine and was awarded first place for the best poster in the category "Oncology Basic".

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 701983.