OSTEOIMMUNE · OSTEOIMMUNE - Unraveling the Interactions between the Immune System and Bone

Inflammatory rheumatic diseases affect millions of European citizens causing chronic pain, disability and premature death. Curative treatments are lacking. Conventional research often focuses on one single organ system such as the bone or the immune system and. ignores interactions between organ systems. OSTEOIMMUNE is a supra-disciplinary training network that targets this gap by providing comprehensive, structured and coherent training. The scientific training within OSTEOIMMUNE reflects the participants‘ common research programme aiming to unravel the interactions between the immune system and the skeleton. A group of outstanding European scientists in genetics, (osteo-) immunology, rheumatology and drug development has joined to form OSTEOIMMUNE to provide 12 ESRs and 2 ERs with training in a broad range of laboratory and complementary skills and capacities. OSTEOIMMUNE participants represent 7 of Europe's most active academic centres in arthritis research and 3 highly innovative biotech and pharmaceutical companies. All have contributed important concepts to the field, five groups have earned the title „Centre of excellence“. OSTEOIMMUNE participants have an outstanding history of successful collaboration which is reflected in numerous influential joint papers and common efforts in national and European networks (e.g. DFG: IMMUNOBONE, BMBF: IMMUNOPAIN, FP6: EURO-RA, AUTO-CURE, FP7: MASTER-SWITCH) and have trained numerous highly successful ESRs and ERs. Our young investigators will leave the network after successful completion of their training with a set of aptitudes that will enable them to be instrumental in developing curative therapies towards rheumatic diseases, be it in an academic, clinical or industrial setting. Moreover, OSTEOIMMUNE will establish a long-lasting consortium for cutting edge research in the field of osteoimmunology, leading to accelerated and integrated discoveries, which can become commercially exploitable first by European industry.