Vaccine boosts innate immunity in people with dormant immune cells.

Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is one of the world’s oldest and most widely used vaccines. It was developed in the early 20th century to provide protection from tuberculosis. Surprisingly, this vaccine protects not only against tuberculosis but also reduces the risk for various other infections, through a mechanism called trained immunity. A new study led by SFB […]

DOC scholarships from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) for young scientists at the Vetmeduni Vienna.

Myint Aung (group Heidi Neubauer) and Jonatan Kendler (group Richard Moriggl) were each awarded one of the coveted DOC scholarships of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW, https://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/fellowships/doc). The scholarships are awarded to outstanding young scientists in a highly competitive selection process. Myint will use preclinical mouse modelst o investigate the oncogenic STAT5B-driven disease mechanisms […]

Sylvia Knapp receives Prize of the City of Vienna

On 16 May 2023 Sylvia Knapp, Professor of Infection Biology at the Medical University of Vienna and PI of SFB F61, was awarded the Prize of the City of Vienna in the category Medical Sciences. The awards for outstanding achievements in culture and science were presented by the City Councillor for Culture and Science, Veronica […]

Spinning-off with Inhibiting STAT5

The SFB members Anna Orlova and Richard Moriggl are co-founders of the pharmaceutical start-up RIANA Therapeutics spun out of Vetmeduni Vienna in February 2023. RIANA Therapeutics focuses on developing novel anti-cancer treatments with hope to improve life of cancer patients. For further information see https://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/en/universitaet/infoservice/presseinformationen/presseinformationen-2023/riana-viennese-start-up-develops-novel-precise-anti-cancer-drugs

Change of Subproject Leadership

The SFB Jak-Stat subproject leader Veronika Sexl took the lead of the University of Innsbruck (https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/) in March 2023. Veronika was appointed head of the rectorate in an international selection process for a period of four years. The SFB members congratulate Veronika to this highly responsible and prestigious position. We will miss Veronika’s scientific excellence […]

Recent Paper: Interferons and stress boost the good and the bad of macrophages

Interferons (IFNs) activate cell-intrinsic defence mechanisms to fight infections. The innate immune response to infections overlaps and cooperates with cellular stress signalling governed by the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) p38. Laura Boccuni in the group of Thomas Decker unravelled the molecular mechanism how macrophages merge the IFN JAK-STAT and the stress p38 MAPK pathways to […]

JAK-STAT 30th Anniversary

The JAK-STAT signaling pioneers James E Darnell, John J O‘Shea and George R Stark and former or current co-workers in their labs co-author a comprehensive review on the current knowledge on the cellular and systemic activities of JAKs and STATs and possibilities of their therapeutic targeting in disease settings (see https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.09.023). The Viennese JAK-STAT community […]

Katarzyna Sitnik wins Merit Award of CMV Conference

  https://www.cmv2022.org Abstract of Oral Presentation Pdgfra-positive fibroblasts are a major site of mouse cytomegalovirus latency in vivo. Latent cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections pertain to most of the human population, yet our understanding of the cell types that carry latent CMV in vivo remains limited. While endothelial cells and macrophages have been identified previously as sites […]

Recent Paper: Antiviral immunity requires changes of chromosome structure

Innate immunity to viral infection is achieved by a group of polypeptide mediators, the interferons (IFN). By binding to cell surface receptors they initiate signal transduction via Janus kinases (JAK) that the STATs target, a group of transcription factors. STATs combine to form a transcription factor, ISGF3, that activates transcription of a large number of […]

Recent Paper: Oncogenically mutated TYK2 can be targeted by combinatorial treatment in modelled cell lines and patient-derived cells

Our work builds on a previously published paper (https://doi.org/10.1038/leu.2016.277) describing germ-line TYK2 gain-of-function (GOF) mutations identified in childhood leukemia. In close collaboration with the Dutch pediatric oncologists we studied the oncogenic and druggable properties of the two activating mutations of this JAK family member tyrosine kinase. We demonstrate the transformation capacity of the potent TYK2P760L […]