International Trauma Symposium Ulm
Date: 19.-21.09.2022
Location: Teaching building ToTrainU (TTU)
Symposium round-up (by Marsela Hakani und Ester Nespoli)
The International Trauma Symposium 2022, organized by the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1149, which took place in Ulm from the 19th until the 21st of September 2022, has successfully closed. With topics ranging from neurotrauma, kidney injury and bone fractures, among others, the International Trauma Symposium 2022 was subcategorized into four sessions and covered the topics “acute danger response to trauma”, “trauma disturbance factors”, “regenerative potential after trauma” and “animal modeling in trauma – Pros and cons”. While renowned national and international experts in the field of trauma research presented their most recent findings during the first three sessions, the last session was carried out in form of an interactive discussion and enjoyed great acceptance inside the audience. Overall, it was an insightful meeting where researchers and students from different fields of trauma research came together to share and discuss their exciting findings and to set the basis for future fruitful collaborations in basic and translational trauma research.
Among the keynote speakers, Prof. Timothy Billiar (Pittsburgh, USA), a long-term collaborator of the CRC 1149, opened the first session of the symposium by arguing for the need of a multiomic and personalized approach to adequately understand and manage the individual response to severe injury. Another keynote speaker, Prof. Martin Schwab (Zurich, Switzerland), took us onto a journey from the discovery of the anti-Nogo-A antibodies to how they could prove beneficial for subjects with spinal cord injury. Prof Sebastian Weis (Jena, Germany) then introduced the concept of disease tolerance and elucidated the interesting issue whether tolerating a disease could be better than fighting it, while Prof. Elisabeth Binder (Munich, Germany) discussed the implications of gene x environment interactions for the development of trauma/stress-related psychiatric disorders. Finally, Prof Nikolaus Plesnila (Munich, Germany) presented evidence for and discussed the relevance of blood-brain-barrier dysfunction in traumatic brain injury. Internal speakers from Ulm University, like Prof. Tobias Böckers, Prof. Francesco Roselli, Prof Markus Huber-Lang, Prof. Gilbert Weidinger, Prof. Jan Tuckermann and apl. Prof Melanie Haffner-Luntzer completed the sessions and also shared the highlights of their previous trauma research as well as their thoughts for the future progression of the CRC 1149.
A networking event, held in the restaurant “Bootshaus” in Ulm, further allowed all participants to foster social interaction and to have insightful discussions.