ECDO conference 2024

About the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine

The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg  is accelerating biomedical research by closing the link between systems biology and medical research. Collaboration between biologists, medical doctors, computer scientists, physicists, engineers and mathematicians is offering new insights in complex systems like cells, organs, and organisms. These insights are essential for understanding principal mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and for developing new tools in diagnostics and therapy.

The LCSB combines experimental and computational approaches to analyse complex biological systems and disease processes with a strong focus on neuropathology including neurodegeneration and epilepsy. The overarching strategy of the interdisciplinary research centre is to combine systematically experimental and theoretical approaches to develop mechanistic disease models.

More information can be found on the LCSB website.

Organisers

Michael Heneka  is the Director of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine at the University of Luxembourg and the head of the Neuroinflammation group.

He studied medicine in Tübingen, Lausanne and London from 1990-1996. He obtained his medical degree at the Institute of Pharmacology for which he received the 1998 Attempto Award of the University of Tübingen. He started his clinical residency in Neurology at the Dept. of Neurology of the Univ. of Tübingen in 1996 and joined the Dept. of Neurology at the University of Bonn in 1999. After his clinical board examination (2002) and habilitation (2003) he took the chair as Professor for Molecular Neurology at the University of Münster in 2004. In 2008 he was appointed Professor for Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Bonn heading the DFG Clinical Research Unit 177. At the clinical level he has established a neurodegenerative outpatient unit at the University of Münster and thereafter at the University of Bonn from 2008-2016. The latter has been the basis for the foundation of the Dept. of Neurodegenerative Disease and Geriatric Psychiatry in 2016, which he was heading until his move to the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) in January 2022.

He is an editorial board member of various neuroscience journals and serves as scientific advisory board member of the Paris Brain Institute, the Dementia Research Institute UK and the Dementia Discovery Fund. He is the organiser of the biannual meeting “Venusberg Meeting on Neuroinflammation” since 2009 as well as co-organiser of various international meetings and symposia.

Michael Heneka’s research focus is on neurodegenerative diseases with a special emphasis on immune mechanisms in the central nervous system with the goal of developing new biomarkers and medical intervention programs. The group works e.g. on elucidating the role of tunnelling nanotubes for cell-to-cell communication and on exploring how immune cells regulate neuronal functions.

 

 

Dirk Brenner is since 2020 Full Professor of Immunology and Genetics, Principal Investigator of the Immunology & Genetics group at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) and heads the ‘Experimental & Molecular Immunology’ lab (EMI) at the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH).

He studied biochemistry at the Universities of Bonn (Germany), Witten/Herdecke (Germany), Stanford University (USA), and Harvard University (USA). He completed his PhD and early postdoctoral studies in Heidelberg (Germany). At the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ, Germany), he was a member of the research group of Prof Dr Peter H. Krammer, who pioneered research on cell death. As an ‘Alexander von Humboldt’ fellow, he joined the laboratory of Prof Dr Tak W. Mak at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto (Canada), known for the discovery of the T cell receptor, the first physiological description of CTLA-4 and for reversed genetics. During that time, Prof Brenner was awarded with four postdoctoral fellowships including the ‘Alexander von Humboldt foundation’ (Germany) and the ‘Cancer Research Institute’ (USA).

Dirk Brenner is an immunologist who connects molecular and metabolic principles with the regulation of inflammatory diseases and cancer. He has a long-standing publication record as first, as well as senior author, in the fields of immunology, metabolism and cancer. He and his lab are specialised in in vivo applications and have, in the recent past, contributed to our understanding of how metabolism controls immunity. His lab investigates the metabolic regulation of the immune system and how this ensures a coordinated immune response and homeostasis. They seek to define the molecular, metabolic and cellular processes of inflammation and integrate in vitro with in vivo studies to gain a comprehensive picture of inflammation and cancer.