Mechanisms of the Establishment and Maintenance of Immunological Tolerance

The human immune system has the important function to protect an organism against invading pathogens. This is a complex regulatory process that is dependent on the interactions of different cells of the immune system. This basic process has to be tightly controlled to avoid that the immune system attacks healthy cells of the own organism. This would have dramatic consequences for a human being and could lead to the development of autoimmune diseases. Therefore, the ability of the immune system not to attack the own organism, the so-called "immunological tolerance", has to be properly developed and also kept in control during the lifespan of an individual. Within this Special Research Area (SFB) a network of Vienna scientists from the Medical University of Vienna, from the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) will investigate how establishment and maintenance of immunological tolerance is regulated. By using a variety of different experimental approaches molecular and cellular mechanisms will be analyzed that control that the immune responses are not directed against the own organism. These SFB studies will not only provide a better insight into these important processes, but may in the long-term range also open medical relevant avenues towards strategies to correct malfunctions of the immune system.