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At the occasion of the fifth training day organised in Tallinn (Estonia) on 19 September 2008, the EuroThymaide project awarded two researchers ex-aequo for their scientific presentations.

The laureates are Mr Martin AICHINGER, from the Institute for Immunology, Ludwig-Maximilians- University Munich, Germany and Mr Christian KOBLE from the German Cancer Research Center Heidelberg, Germany.

The first presentation given by Martin AICHINGER described his work in developing novel tools for the identification of specific expression markers which could be candidate genetic markers of the Thymic epithelial cells (TEC) which play a fundamental role for the development of a healthy immune system.

Mr Christian Koble presented his work which contributes to the elucidation of the mechanisms of constitutive cross-presentation of endogenous self- antigens by Thymic Dendritic Cells.
This work is important as the role of central tolerance induction has been recently revised following the discovery of promiscuous expression of tissue-restricted self-antigens in the thymus. The work done at the German Cancer Research Center Heidelberg helps in understanding the extent of tissue representation afforded by this mechanism and its cellular and molecular regulation.