National Research Data Infrastructure for Immunology

• Subject Area: Biology ; Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine ; Medicine
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 501875662

The immune system plays a fundamental role in health and disease and efficiently protects vertebrate hosts from infections and cancer. However, failures in its regulation can cause autoimmunity, allergy, immunodeficiencies and malignancies. To perform the critical task of self/non-self recognition, the innate immune system employs genomically fixed pattern recognition receptors. The adaptive immune system, however, utilizes billions of randomly generated immunoglobulins/antibodies and T cell receptors (hereafter: adaptive immune receptors), which are expressed by cells of the B cell and T cell lineage, respectively. The phenotype, functionality, activation state and anatomic location of these cells, as well as the adaptive immune receptor repertoire (AIRR) of an individual host, are reflective of the key processes within the immune system: diversification, selection, antigen recognition and clonal expansion. A comprehensive insight into these processes will facilitate a mechanistic understanding and advance the development of diagnostic markers and novel therapeutic strategies. The main objective of NFDI4Immuno is therefore to provide the capability to combine data and metadata from diverse experimental technologies, such as cytometry, sequencing, immunoassay and imaging, which provide complementary observations of these processes. To this end, the consortium will 1) harmonize data representations, metadata standards, ontologies and programmatic interfaces with other NFDI consortia to facilitate queries and cross-references across consortia, 2) provide consistent metadata annotation to existing and new data sets and make them available through its repositories, 3) enable and support users to utilize the resources provided by the consortium and promote the adoption of FAIR practices by the immunological community, in support of the cultural change towards Open Science, 4) build and operate a network of federated repositories for immunological data and 5) develop tools and services that will facilitate standardized and reproducible data analyses. On the national level, the consortium will closely collaborate with the German Society for Immunology (DGfI) and the German Society for Cytometry (DGfZ) as well as the NFDI consortia NFDI4Microbiota, InnoMatSafety, NFDI4BIOIMAGE, GHGA and NFDI4Health. Beyond the national scope, NFDI4Immuno will connect with various international activities, e.g., IUIS, ISAC, EBCnet, IEDB, EuroClonality, iReceptor Plus and the AIRR Community.

• DFG Programme: NFDI technical and methodological consortia
• Applicant Institution: Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ)
• Co-Applicant Institution: Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Deutsche Knochenmarkspenderdatei (DKMS) ; Zentrale Tübingen; Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin (DRFZ); Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut; Bundesforschungsinstitut für Tiergesundheit; Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung (HZI); Ruhr-Universität Bochum; Technische Universität Dresden; Universität Münster, since 4/2023; Universitätsklinikum Essen; Universitätsklinikum Münster, until 4/2023
• Spokesperson: Dr. Christian Busse
• Co-Spokespersons: Professorin Dr. Nina Babel; Professor Dr. Hyun-Dong Chang; Professorin Dr. Anca Dorhoi; Dr. Anne Eugster; Professor Dr. Michael Hummel; Professor Dr. Ralf Küppers; Professor Dr. Michael Meyer-Hermann; Professor Dr. Sven Nahnsen; Professor Dr. Johannes Schetelig; Professor Dr. Nicholas Schwab, Ph.D.
• Participating Persons: Professorin Dr. Barbara Bröker; Privatdozentin Dr. Cornelia Eckert, Ph.D.; Dr. Katharina Imkeller; Professor Dr. Felix Meissner; Dr. Katherina Siewert; Professor Dr. Dietmar Zehn