There is so much to discuss: for the majority of the 80 CIBSS researchers participating on-site at the Bürgerhaus Denzlingen on October 6 and 7, 2021, the meeting of the Cluster of Excellence was the first in-person conference since the lockdown of 2020-2021. Another 60 participants joined online. Together they discussed the latest signaling science discoveries in their fields, ranging from immunology to plant research, and from biochemistry to epigenetics and developmental biology. Discoveries made in individual and collaborative projects in CIBSS advance our fundamental understanding of life. Some findings lead us already toward innovations, revealing promising new strategies to treat immune diseases and cancer, and to improve plant use of soil resources. "The many great fundamental insights and application examples produced in CIBSS in the first 1000 days show the remarkable potential of what our research team can achieve with it innovative, integrative approach to signalling research," says Prof. Dr. Carola Hunte, member of the CIBSS Speaker Team. Speaker Team colleague Prof. Dr. Wilfried Weber emphasizes, "Progress so far has been excellent, and we are convinced that the best is yet to come." 

Stock-taking and reconnecting

Apart from discussing scientific results and connecting with colleagues to develop new ideas, an important aim of a scientific retreat is to discuss successes, challenges and progress towards achieving goals in order to steer development of the consortium. Valuable external perspective was provided by international experts in the CIBSS Scientific Advisory Board. Scientific Advisory Board Chair, Prof. Dr. Jane Mellor from the University of Oxford, UK, commented, “CIBSS has a highly innovative and interdisciplinary research programme and has emerged as an international hub for signalling research”. Progress was visible not only in the exciting discoveries presented in the scientific sessions but also in the impressive list of 545 peer-reviewed publications since 2019. During the conference, researchers from many different fields shared results and developed new perspectives for the Cluster's research: in particular, conference participants of all career levels discussed developments in the so-called Cross-Sectional Topics Mito-Hub, Integrative Immune Signalling, Signalling Roots, Signalling in Organogenesis. Another highlight of the retreat programme was the evening networking and poster session, where 40 early career researchers presented and discussed the latest results from their CIBSS projects. “It was great to be able to meet in-person again and to receive feedback on my project from scientists within and outside my field”, explains Nadine Wössner, doctoral researcher in CIBSS.

Welcoming new members and honouring achievements

Since the launch in 2019, the CIBSS community has gained strength through the recruitment of CIBSS Professor Prof. Dr. Robert Grosse, appointed in 2019, as well as Dr. Natalie Köhler and Dr. David Haselbach, who both started CIBSS Tenure Track Professorships in 2021. The CIBSS community also welcomed the new members of the Cluster: Prof. Dr. Anna Köttgen, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Kleine-Vehn, Prof. Dr. Björn Lillemeier, Dr. Elke Barbez, Dr. Miriam Schmidts and Dr. Franziska Schneider-Warme. In the retreat welcome address of the Speaker Team, Prof. Dr. Carola Hunte thanked all project leaders and early career researchers in the Cluster, “None of this would be without your hard work pushing the CIBSS programme forward despite the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic”.

Immunologist Prof. Dr. Robert Zeiser received a special honor: the Cluster awarded him the 2021 CIBSS Award for his publication in Science Translational Medicine in 2020 entitled "Metabolic reprogramming of donor T cells enhances graft-versus-leukemia effects in mice and humans" . Each year, the Cluster's Steering Board, in consultation with the Scientific Advisory Board, uses the award to highlight the achievements of CIBSS researchers and honour a particularly important publication that exemplifies the integrative signalling research approach of CIBSS. In his study, Robert Zeiser shows how a molecular intervention targeting the metabolism can help transplanted immune cells to fight leukemia.

A vibrant research community

Together, CIBSS researchers are showing how the integrative approach of examining signalling across scales and combining signalling research with Control-of-Function strategies from chemical and synthetic biology is leading to important discoveries in basic research that are also resulting in concrete applications for biomedicine and agriculture. However, much remains to be discovered in the world of biological signals: "The vision of CIBSS to understand and communicate in the language of life is an ambitious goal and can only be reached with an integrative approach and a collaborative, interdisciplinary team. At the retreat, it was wonderful to see our research community connect again in person – it is exactly this collaborative spirit that is propelling research in CIBSS forward", concludes member of the Speaker Team Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Driever.