The Immune Alliance - a German-Japanese Cooperation in Immunology Bilateral Cooperation

Carolin Daniel obtained her Ph.D. in Immune Pharmacology from the European Graduate School of the German Research Foundation in Frankfurt, Germany, and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2008. She then received a fellowship from the Leopoldina/National Academy of Sciences Germany to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in Immunology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Harald von Boehmer, with a joint appointment at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. From 2012 to 2016, she led a Young Investigator Group on Immune Tolerance in Type 1 Diabetes at the Helmholtz Diabetes Center, Helmholtz Munich. From 2017 to 2022, she served as an independent Research Group leader focusing on T cell tolerance in diabetes and obesity at the same institution. Since 2019, she has been Professor of Immune Modulation at LMU Munich Hospital, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, and in 2022 she was appointed Head of the independent Research Unit “Type 1 Diabetes Immunology” (TDI) at Helmholtz Munich. Her research focuses on regulatory T cells in metabolic diseases, particularly Type 1 Diabetes, leveraging their dual role in immune regulation and tissue function for precision immune modulation. Her team investigates Treg-based immune-metabolic crosstalk to develop innovative therapies targeting autoimmunity, inflammation, and tissue regeneration in metabolic diseases.

Kiyoshi Takeda graduated from Osaka University School of Medicine in 1992 and conducted his PhD work at the Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University under the supervision of Prof. Shizuo Akira. He was an assistant professor at Hyogo College of Medicine, and Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, where he worked on Toll-like receptor-dependent pathogen recognition mechanisms. In 2003, he became a professor at Medical Institute of Bioregulation, Kyushu University, and then moved to Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University in 2007. Now, he is a director and professor at Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka University. His research activity is focused on understanding the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel diseases, particularly the analysis of how intestinal homeostasis is maintained by mucosal immune cells and epithelial cells.