The immune system has evolved to protect our body against infectious agents, which can cause serious and often fatal diseases. Dysregulation of the immune response can result in many different pathological outcomes such as allergy, classical autoimmune diseases, atherosclerosis, and other inflammatory disorders. It is now unequivocally established that inflammatory-immunological processes play a major role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases in general and atherosclerosis in particular. Inflammation drives the formation, progression, and finally rupture of atherosclerotic lesions. Accumulating experimental evidence speaks for a key role for inflammation as a link between risk factors for atherosclerosis and the biology that underlies the complications of this disease. Recent clinical trials support the practical utility of an assessment of the inflammatory status in guiding prevention and intervention, respectively, to limit cardiovascular events. Of note, inflammation is thus moving from a theoretical concept to a tool that can provide practical clinical utility in diagnosis, risk assessments, and personalized targeting therapy.

This Summer School entitled “Inflammation and Cardiovascular Disease” is intended to provide a broad and in-depth understanding of the close relationship between inflammation and atherosclerosis. The Summer School will be held in an academic environment that will enable young researchers (graduate students, PhD, and MD) to readily meet distinguished front-runners in the field of basic and clinical immunology and atherosclerosis. The speakers and participants will be given plenty of time to discuss the focus of their respective research area. This Summer School will help to construct new collaborative networks of young and senior researchers and clinicians as well as participants from industrial scientific departments with different backgrounds and interests, and promote closer interaction between the bench and the clinic.


Download the poster of ICVD Summer School here