Abstract
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is driven by genetic susceptibility (>320 known loci explaining >77% of heritability) and environmental factors, with 38% of risk signals being subtype-specific. Specific variants in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region on chromosome 6p21 are by far the strongest genetic risk factor for most autoimmune and chronic immune-mediated diseases. While HLA associations are well-documented, the mechanisms - particularly the identity of pathogenic antigens (self or environmental) - remain poorly understood. This talk will highlight key genetic, immunogenetic, and microbiome insights into IBD pathogenesis. A short summary of our recent success story on the role of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in primary sclerosing colitis, published in Nature Medicine (El Abd et al., 2025), will be given.
Short biosketch
Prof. Andre Franke (1978) directs the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology (IKMB) at Kiel University, overseeing the high-throughput laboratory facilities (biobank, sequencing and genotyping, microbiome labs) as well as the bioinformatics unit at the Centre for Molecular Life Sciences . After studying biology/informatics (1998-2003), he earned his PhD at CAU Kiel in 2006, first linking autophagy to IBD (Hampe & Franke et al., Nat Genet 2007). At 29, he became Associate Professor (Zürich, 2011), advancing to Full Professor of Molecular Medicine in 2016. His research focuses on inflammatory diseases and technology development. Since 2020, he leads the EU H2020 miGut-Health project. With 771+ publications (IF>9738, h-index 142, total citation 100K+), he ranks among the world's most cited cross-field researchers.
