Goodbye to allergies!
Marc Schmidt and Matthias Goebeler investigate metal hypersensitivity
Many people will be familiar with it: Contact with nickel, which is found in jewelry, coins, but also in implants and cell phones, causes unpleasant skin rashes. Allergies to chromate VI, widely used in the leather industry or the construction sector, often lead to occupational disability. These contact allergies are caused by T-cell mediated hypersensitivity responses. Such an overreaction occurs in two phases: The first contact with the metal is asymptomatic, the second is accompanied by rashes. A prerequisite for this is an activation of the immune system.
Marc Schmidt and Matthias Goebeler from the University Hospital Würzburg want to find out which cell types mediate the immune reaction. Together with Georg Gasteiger from the University of Würzburg, they are investigating the immune response and its dynamics at the level of single cells. Their findings could provide the basis for new strategies in the treatment of patients with occupational metal allergies.
About the Single-Cell Center Würzburg
The Single-Cell Center Würzburg is a joint competence center of the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) with the Faculty of Medicine of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU), the University Hospital Würzburg (UKW), the Fraunhofer Translational Center for Regenerative Therapies (TLZ-RT), and the Max Planck Research Group at the Würzburg Institute of Systems Immunology (WüSI).
The center’s objective is to analyze and understand diseases at the level of individual cells. In the future, this will enable the earliest possible and most reliable prediction of a disease and how it can be treated in the best possible way.
