Title: Rothenfels Castle ‐ the place to be for immunology of infection
Abstract: The beautiful Rothenfels Castle is located close to Würzburg in Northern Bavaria and rises high above the scenic Main valley. It is a place of history, mysteries and traditions. For 22 years now, it has also played host to an annual meeting for infection biologists, who use the event to exchange their ideas, enjoy science and develop future concepts. The meeting is organized by the Infection Immunology working group, which is a joint initiative between the German Society for Immunology (DGfI), who celebrated their 50th anniversary last year 1, and the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology (DGHM), founded over 100 years ago. There are 13 and 10 working groups within the DGfI and DGHM, respectively. Each working group concentrates on a different field of immunology and microbiology, organizes its own annual meeting and participates in the activities of its respective society. Many working groups pursue an interdisciplinary and often international approach. However, all follow the same concept: The scientific program of the meetings is put together from submitted abstracts with no or few invited speakers. Registration fees are kept as low as possible to allow high numbers of junior scientists to participate. The Infection Immunology joint working group is the only working group that is rooted in both societies. It fosters interactions and exchange of ideas between scientists interested in immunity to bacteria, viruses and parasites from various institutions within Germany and abroad. Moreover, a key objective of this working group is to provide exposure for young scientists working in the field of microbial immunity by giving them the opportunity to present their data in short oral presentations. The latest iteration of this meeting took place from the 7th to 9th March 2018. 65 participants from 19 institutions and 3 countries convened to discuss their most recent findings (Figure 1). The young scientist Stephanie Obermeyer (currently a PhD student at the Universitätsklinikum Erlangen) was awarded the “1st Roche Prize for Microbial Immunity” for her outstanding oral presentation “Disease exacerbation in Leishmania major-infected mice upon iron overload is driven by the induction of arginase 1” (Figure 2). This year's keynote speakers Cormac Taylor (School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Ireland) and Peter Murray (Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany) gave insight into their exciting research on the “Regulation of inflammation, immunity and infection by hypoxia” and “Immunoregulation by amino acid metabolism”, respectively. Both the keynote lectures and short talks emphasized that a better understanding of host-pathogen interaction requires comprehensive knowledge of the metabolic needs of immune cells. Therefore, pathogen-induced manipulation of the host immunometabolism has emerged as a research field which will advance basic knowledge of microbial immunity as well as facilitate the design of novel disease interventions. Participants presented data on immunity to a wide range of pathogens, including Yersinia, Shigella, Pseudomonas, Escherichia, Listeria, Chlamydia, Coxiella, Mycobacterium, Cryptococcus, Leishmania, Entamoeba, Schistosoma, Plasmodium, Toxoplasma and influenza viruses. Reports focused on the mechanisms of pathogen recognition and associated downstream signaling events. Moreover, there were several presentations describing how the quality and control of the adaptive immune response determine whether an infection ultimately ends in immuno-evasion or pathogen removal. Of note, several talks emphasized how co-infections (bacto-viral or bacto-parasitic) impact disease outcome in various experimental models. Finally, veterinary infection immunology emerged as a new topic highly relevant for the control of and preparedness to zoonotic infections. Over the past two decades, the participatory and relaxed atmosphere at the Rothenfels Castle has facilitated scientific networking, the formation of new cooperation clusters and generation of new ideas. In this spirit, the next meeting will be held from March 27th–29th 2019. Save the date and join us at the Rothenfels Castle to explore new horizons in immunology of infection! Registration details will be circulated on the homepages of the DGfI (www.dgfi.de), DGHM (www.dghm.de) and EFIS (www.efis.org). Anca Dorhoi (Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Insel Riems – Greifswald, Germany), Jonathan Jantsch (University of Regensburg, Germany) and Norbert Reiling (Research Center Borstel, Germany) for the Infection Immunology Working Group of the DGfI and DGHM