Infection & Immunity: specializes in opportunistic infections, immune deficiencies and chronic inflammation.
Ambition: to optimize diagnosis and treatment of these diseases.
The program Infection & Immunity aims to improve clinical care for patients with an inflammatory disease resulting from failing immunity and/or infection. The program aims to host the full range of academic research to obtain four goals.
Understand the (molecular) epidemiology of infections and antimicrobial resistance; understand the pathophysiology of infections and of failing or overreacting host responses; develop highly innovative strategies to diagnose, treat and prevent infections, immune deficiency and inflammatory diseases; and finally, to improve health-care through applying (and evaluating) these ‘research products’ in patients and healthy subjects.
Research, care and high-quality education of the program will be organized in two translational research centers: The Utrecht Center for Prevention of Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance, primarily focusing on pathogens and prevention of infectious disease, and The Utrecht Center for Clinical Immunology, primarily focusing on failing or overreacting host responses and their treatment.
Immunologist Erik Hack: “Patients suffering from immune deficiencies or chronic inflammation will in 2015 receive the best possible treatment.”