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Konstanz toxicologist elected president of the ECDO

Ivano Amelio, professor of systems toxicology at the University of Konstanz, to lead the European Cell Death Organisation

Konstanz toxicologist Ivano Amelio has been elected president of the European Cell Death Organization (ECDO). As president elect, in January 2024 he joined the ECDO Executive Board under the office of the current ECDO president, Professor Inna Lavrik (University of Magdeburg). His three-year term of office will begin in January of 2027.

The ECDO was founded in 1994 and now has more than 200 members from research groups in Europe and elsewhere who study cell death. This research field looks into the biochemical and genetic mechanisms that lead to the death of a cell. "Programmed cell death" lays the foundation for various life processes, for example, during embryonic development or in the reduction of immune cells after an immune response has taken place. Dysregulation of cell death can cause serious damages in an organism and is at the basis of disease onset.

Ivano Amelio is a professor of systems toxicology at the University of Konstanz. Amelio is a principal investigator in the Collaborative Research Center/Transregio SFB-TRR 353 "Regulation of cell death decisions". The mechanisms of cell death are an important field of research at the University of Konstanz. One of Germany’s biggest research alliances in the field of toxicology and the related research on cell death was established in Konstanz. Principal investigators from different fields work together to study the fundamental cellular processes of ageing and death.