Immunogenetics
The term immunogenetics is made up of the terms immunology and genetics . According to the MeSH definition (NCBI / NLM, 1971), this is "a sub-discipline of genetics that deals with the genetic basis of the immune response."
The Genetics (from the Greek genea γενεά, descent 'and γένεσις genesis, origin ') is the science that studies the transmission of characteristics from one to the next generation. The genes of an organism (sections of DNA) as well as the transmission of genes from the parent to the child generation of an organism within the scope of the possible variations of heredity are the basic units of its inheritance.
The Immunology is the study of the biological and biochemical basis of physical defense against pathogens such as bacteria , viruses and fungal infections (fungi) and other foreign substances such as biological toxins and environmental poisons, and beyond faults and malfunctions of these defense mechanisms. In addition to these external influences on the organism, there are also defensive reactions to the body's own cells, for example in the context of the body's reaction to cancerous ulcers and the wrong reaction of the body to healthy cells in the context of an autoimmune disease . Immunology is thus a sub-discipline of biology .
The term immunogenetics thus encompasses all the processes in an organism that are controlled or influenced by the organism's genes on the one hand and play a role in the organism's immunological defense reactions on the other.
History of Immunogenetics
The history of medicine on the subject of immunology and the immune system goes back to the 19th century, with questions about the prevention and early defense against diseases in the entire development of mankind was an essential task for shamans, medicine men and early "doctors". The first Nobel Prize in the field of immunogenetics was awarded in 1980 to Baruj Benacerraf , Jean Dausset and George Davis Snell for their discoveries of certain genetic cellular surface structures that control immunological reactions.
Current research topics
In the last 20 years, research has been carried out on a large number of different questions in immunogenetics. The acceleration as well as the falling costs for the sequencing of genes have meant that more and more academic and commercial working groups are intensively dealing with this. Current research topics address in particular questions
- which course prognoses and therapy recommendations for diseases can be made on the basis of genetic dispositions and
- how can these genetic dispositions be influenced with active substances (gene therapy).
A special focus is often on the prognosis and therapy of genetically based autoimmune diseases. In medicine, autoimmune diseases are understood to mean all diseases whose cause is an excessive reaction of the immune system against the body's own tissue. The immune system mistakenly recognizes the body's own tissue as a foreign body to be combated. This leads to severe inflammatory reactions that can lead to permanent damage to the affected organs. Autoimmune diseases in which the outbreak or the course of the disease can be based on the individual genome of the organism include, for example, multiple sclerosis , type I diabetes , rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn's disease (an example of an autoimmune disease without a genetic disposition would be HIV - this one caused by viruses). For example, multiple sclerosis was discussed in a highly regarded article in the journal Nature from May 2010 (Baranzini et al .: Genome, epigenome and RNA sequences of monozygotic twins discordant for multiple sclerosis. Nature 2010, 464; pp. 1351-1356 - Link see below) it has been proven that this disease does not break out due to a genetic variation, but that the course and the treatability are significantly influenced by genetic dispositions. The basis for this work were three identical pairs of twins, one of which has multiple sclerosis and the other does not.
Web links
Associations
Some academic research groups in Germany
- Roland Martin, Institute for Neuroimmunology and Clinical Multiple Sclerosis Research at the University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf
- Bernhard Hemmer, Neurological Clinic and Polyclinic rd Isar, Munich
- Saleh Ibrahim, head of the working group for immunogenetics - University of Lübeck
- Endowed professorship at TU Dresden, Wassmuth
- Klaus Toyka, Würzburg University Hospital
- Matthias Endres, Clinic for Neurology at the Charité, Berlin
- Immunogenetics at the DKFZ in Heidelberg, Peter Krammer
- Institute for Immunology and Genetics Kaiserslautern
Some companies with research in the field of immunogenetics
Little information is available about German companies doing research in the field of immunogenetics and related gene therapy. Some are:
- Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG
- Center for Human Genetics and Laboratory Medicine
- Immungenetics AG