miTarget at the Viszeralmedizin 2023

The conference “Viszeralmedizin 2023”, organized by the DGVS (“German Society for Gastroenterology, Digestive-, and Metabolic Diseases”) took place in Hamburg from the 13th – 16th of September. The large German conference covered a wide array of clinical and basic scientific topics, naturally including various sessions about microbiome research and its application, criticism, and potential in a clinical setting. One keynote speaker and collaborator in miTarget, Prof. Eran Elinav (recipient of the “Ismar Boas-Medaille der DGVS 2023”), gave striking talks about the involvement of the microbiome in cancer therapy as well as early experiments with phage therapy in IBD, which was recently published together with P1 in Cell (Federici et al 2022). Several miTarget members, like Andre Franke (P1), Philip Rosenstiel (P3), and Florian Tran (assoc.) shared their expertise covering, immunological, metabolic, microbial, and genomic insights into the etiology of IBD and related diseases. The research unit miTarget itself was (re)presented with a poster by Philipp Rausch (P1), presenting the structure and central themes of the research unit, together with other german research initiatives focussing on gastroenterological topics (e.g. CRC 1371-Microbiome Signatures). The Cluster of Excellence “Precision Medicine in Chronic Inflammation” (PMI) was also (re)presented during this session by two miTarget members, Petra Bacher (P1) and Florian Tran (assoc.).