We are delighted to announce that our new Sony ID7000 Spectral Analyzer has finally arrived and is now part of the Flow Cytometry Core Facility in Bonn. With this addition, the ID7000 becomes the third Sony ID7000 instrument in our facility, further expanding our analytical capacity and ensuring better instrument availability for our users.

Macrophages formed in the bone marrow can only assume the function of embryonal phagocytes, or “scavenger cells,” to a certain degree according to a study by the University of Bonn and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne. The researchers have demonstrated that malaria infection causes permanent damage to resident CD163 macrophages in the spleen, which are responsible for cleaning the blood, recycling iron and communicating with other cells involved in the body’s immune response. Their findings could harbor potential not only for more effective malaria vaccines but also for developing drugs and treatments to combat other infectious diseases. The paper is to be published in the journal “Immunity” but can already be accessed online.

A team from the University of Bonn and the Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Lung Center (FZB) has discovered a previously unknown mechanism of action for a synthetic peptide that mitigates excessive inflammatory responses in allergic asthma. This mechanism specifically inhibits a key inflammatory switch in the immune system and opens up new avenues for treating chronic inflammatory diseases. The findings have now been published in the journal Advanced Science.

Interferon alpha is an inflammatory mediator that can cause Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease. This is revealed in a recent study carried out by the University Hospital Bonn together with the University of Bonn, the University of Edinburgh and Newcastle University. Their findings, which have been published in the journal “Lancet Rheumatology,” could make it easier in the medium term to develop drugs to fight this chronic condition.

For the immune system to effectively combat pathogens, antibody responses must be precisely controlled. So-called follicular regulatory T cells (Tfr cells) play a key role in this process by limiting excessive immune responses and helping to maintain immune tolerance. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have now developed a robust laboratory method that allows Tfr cells to be generated from precursor cells and studied in a targeted manner. The results were recently published in the journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology.

How do pigeons find their way home safely over distances of many kilometers? A research team from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn, the University of Duisburg-Essen, and the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Biology has now discovered a previously unknown mechanism: specific immune cells in the liver may help the birds detect the Earth’s magnetic field. The findings have now been published in the journal Science

Understanding the needs and experiences of users is essential for continuously improving services in Core Facilities and technology platforms. User satisfaction is a Key Performance Indicator. Our partner TillerAlpha has recently published a new guideline titled “Towards More Effective User Surveys”, providing practical recommendations for designing and conducting user satisfaction surveys in research infrastructures.

A new AI-based method reconstructs spatial information about where immune cells were originally located in an organ, even after these cells have been removed from the tissue and analyzed individually. To accomplish this, Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn use the transcriptome, i.e., the entirety of all messenger RNA transcripts produced by genes within a cell at a given time. The work has now been published in the journal Advanced Science and introduces the new MERLIN algorithm.