Institute of Tissue Medicine and Pathology

Gebäude des IGMP

The Institute covers the entire width of the morphological and molecular diagnostics of tissue samples. The combination of service, teaching, and research under one roof allows for close interaction and mutual inspiration. Immune pathologies, inflammatory diseases, and tumor biology are the current research interests.

To the Institute’s website

Director

Prof. Aurel Perren

Profile

  • Teaching students of medicine, dental medicine, pharmacy, biomedicine, and biology as well as graduate students at the Graduate School for Cellular and Biomedical Sciences (GCB)
  • Eight research groups in experimental and clinical tissue medicine focus on translational and basic research in cancer, immunology, and inflammation

External Partners

National Partners

University Hospital, Zurich: Institute of Immunobiology, Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen; University of Basel; CHUV Lausanne, EPFL, Lausanne, Istituto di Ricerca in Biomedicina, Bellinzona; Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ)

International Partners

University of Calgary, Canada; Radboud Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands; Institut für Neuropathologie, UMG, Deutschland; Charité, University Hospital, Berlin; Surgery Dep., San Raffaele, Milan, Italy; David Geffen School of Medicine, Dermatology, UCLA, Los Angeles; Centre de Recherches en Cancérologie de Toulouse - CRCT, Toulouse, France; Biotechnology and Cell Signaling, University of Strasbourg, France; University of Linz, Austria; Yale University, USA; Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway; Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK; Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Grants

  • Swiss National Science Foundation (5)
  • Swiss Cancer Research/Swiss Cancer League (5)
  • Stiftung für klinisch-experimentelle Tumorforschung/Krebsliga Bern (4)
  • Krebsforschung Schweiz (2)
  • Werner und Hedy Berger-Janser Foundation (1) and Wilhelm Sander Foundation (1)
  • Horizon Europe (1)
  • Department of Defense (1)

Highlights 2025

Novel immune checkpoint blockers for the therapy of sepsis

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a dysregulated immune response to infection. Current treatments target the infectious agent and disease symptoms, but none directly address the underlying immune dysfunction. Based on a disease mechanism we discovered, we have developed an innovative immunotherapy for sepsis. In our Innosuisse-funded industry collaboration, we will validate our lead compound in preclinical sepsis models and prepare it for subsequent IND-enabling studies and clinical trials.

To the project on the website of the Swiss Confederation

Expanding cancer diagnostics through an analysis of lymph nodes

Winner of the ISREC Foundation's TANDEM call for proposals 2025

Clinical Deployment and Validation of a Multi-Cancer Deep Learning Algorithm for Lymph Node Metastasis Detection Based on Foundation Models.

This study is based on a tight collaboration between computer science and clinical application. The detection of cancer cells in a patient’s lymph nodes is key to the clinical management of cancer. Now the scientists will extend the training of this algorithm to lymph nodes from 10 cancer types

To the announcement of the ISREC Foundation

European Innovation Council Grant to support “3DPath”

Histopathology is a century-old standard for the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases, and for the choice of personalized treatments. Despite its paramount importance for clinical practice, this method is still limited to the analysis of thin slices, presenting a 2D view of the intrinsically 3D structure of biological tissue. Current histopathology practice poses the risk of severely undersampling relevant tissue features: indeed, a growing amount of data demonstrates that traditional 2D analysis produces inconsistent and unreliable results that may have important implications in treatment choice and other clinical decisions. Despite the compelling evidence of the clinical benefits of volumetric tissue analysis, clinical practice is still anchored to 2D imaging. A transition towards 3D inspection would be a quantum leap in the histopathology field but has been prevented hitherto because of technical limitations. Indeed, light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) has been hailed in the last decades as a game changer in the field. However, LSFM-based solutions have profound limitations in terms of throughput, reliability and scalability that prevent their use outside specialised research labs. In this HORIZON EIC funded Grant totalling >2.8M Euros, Prof. Inti Zlobec and industry partners Clepio Biotech SRL and ACMIT GMBH will leverage several key innovations in LSFM and data analysis technology – developed in previous research projects – to develop a 3D tissue scanner suitable for clinical use. The success of this project will revolutionize histopathology leading to more accurate diagnosis, improving quality of care for patients all over the world, and bringing Europe to the forefront of diagnostic technologies.

To the website of Clepio Biotech