12 mars 2026: Pr Eicke Latz
12H30
CMU - Auditoire Müller
suivi d'un apéritif
Hôte: Pr Cem GABAY
Centre de recherche sur l’inflammation de Genève
Département de médecine, Faculté de médecine UNIGE
Pr Eicke Latz
Scientific Director, German Rheumatology
Research Center Berlin (DRFZ), Germany
Department for Innate Immunity & Metaflammation,
Institute of Innate Immunity, University of Bonn, Germany
«Innate sensing of danger by inflammasomes»
Innate immunity translates danger signals into inflammatory responses that protect the host. However, when dysregulated, overactive or chronic innate immune activation becomes a key driver of many common inflammatory diseases. This lecture focuses on inflammasomes, key cytosolic sensing platforms that activate caspase-1, promote IL-1β and IL-18 maturation, and induce pyroptotic cell death. Inflammasomes are at the center of a mechanistic framework for sterile inflammation and a better molecular understanding of their activation mechanism will enable insights into disease processes.
The lecture describes how diverse disease-relevant perturbations converge on inflammasome assembly, with emphasis on NLRP3 and NLRP1 as integrators of sterile inflammatory cues. It discusses upstream stress pathways and cellular “danger hubs,” including ionic flux, mitochondrial dysfunction, lysosomal damage, metabolic imbalance, redox stress, and activation by particulate or crystalline stimuli. Using examples across cardiometabolic inflammation, rheumatic and neuroinflammatory diseases, autoinflammatory syndromes, and infection-associated immunopathology, the lecture highlights how tissue context, priming signals, and regulatory checkpoints determine the magnitude, timing, and consequences of inflammasome activation and how these factors define actionable molecular endotypes.
Finally, the talk outlines translational opportunities enabled by these insights, including direct inflammasome inhibitors, modulation of upstream licensing pathways, and IL-1/IL-18–targeted strategies. It also addresses how biomarker-guided stratification and mechanism-based patient selection can increase precision, maximize efficacy, and reduce unwanted immune suppression in next-generation anti-inflammatory therapies.
Biography
Prof. Dr. (med.) Eicke Latz studied medicine at the Georg-August University in Göttingen and the Freie Universität Berlin, following which, he worked as an intensive care physician at the Charité Universitätsmedizin. In 2001, he moved to the USA, working as a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University, then at UMass Chan Medical School, where he held his first professorship. In 2010, he returned to Germany and founded the Institute for Innate Immunity at the University Hospital Bonn. He became Scientific Director of the German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin, a Leibniz Institute, and Professor of Experimental Rheumatology at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin in 2023. His research interests concern how the innate immune system maintains health and under what circumstances it can promote disease. In particular, he investigates the molecular mechanisms that lead to activation or inhibition of the immune system and how these influence the inflammatory reactions in various diseases, such as rheumatic diseases, arteriosclerosis or Alzheimer’s disease.
Prof. Dr. Latz is co-spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence “ImmunoSensation²” and spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Centre “Metaflammation and Cellular Programming” (SFB 1454). He has also co-founded several biotech companies, including IFM Therapeutics (2017), Dioscure Therapeutics (2020), a 'Stealth' biotech' (2020), and Odyssey Therapeutics (2021), which translate his discoveries into novel therapeutics and preventive approaches. He has been a highly cited scientist in immunology since 2014 having published more than 300 publications. Prof. Dr. Latz was elected as a member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) in 2016 and has received a number of prestigious awards, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2018.