Phd Student

**The DFG Research Training Group (RTG) “Autoimmune Pre-Disease” (GRK 2633, Spokesperson: Prof. Ralf Ludwig) seeks to employ 1 graduate student from the areas of biology, biochemistry and molecular life sciences. Planned starting date of the positions is 1st April 2025.**

Autoimmune diseases are a major clinical burden, affecting 4-5% of the population. Importantly, causative treatment is currently not possible, often requiring life-long immunosuppression. While treatment is only applied upon clinical disease manifestation, autoimmune diseases develop over years - starting from the loss of tolerance towards self (autoimmunity), which, upon so far unknown trigger factors, may progress to clinically overt autoimmune disease. Unlike in cancer, for which screening for and treatment of pre-disease prevents disease progression, screening for autoimmune pre-disease is far from clinical routine due to the lack of definite biomarkers. However, if sensitive and specific biomarkers for future autoimmune disease could be identified, the clinical manifestations of the disease might be prevented by avoiding environmental factors that trigger disease or by use of therapy that modulates the destructive process before onset of clinical symptoms. Thus, defining and targeting autoimmune pre-disease is the central, and so far, mainly unaddressed, scientific question of RTG 2633.

The RTG investigates Autoimmune Pre-Disease in a multidisciplinary setting: Principal investigators are from basic sciences, such as Immunology, Genetics, Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, Systems Medicine, Anatomy, and Nutrition Medicine, as well as from clinical specialties, such and Dermatology and Rheumatology. Experimentally, the RTG focuses on rheumatic diseases and autoimmune skin diseases, such as pemphigus and pemphigoid. Computationally, the diseases are tackled through integrative multi-Omics, machine learning approaches and modelling.

This results in the following project for which we are looking for a highly motivated person**: PhD A3: Prof. Sadik/ Dr. Murthy: Regulation of autoimmune tissue inflammation through lectins and their receptors