What role does autoimmunity play in ME/CFS, Birgit Sawitzki? (Interview 2025)

Prof Birgit Sawitzki is a professor in Translational Immunology at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) at Charité, Germany. As a trained biochemist she investigates interactions between immune cells in inflammatory responses, which drive severe outcome in diseases such as COVID-19, Influenza, Type II diabetes but also following organ transplantation. Her research group at BIH investigates molecular mechanisms of immune cell activation and tolerance induction, in order to better understand why components of the immune response themselves become a trigger of destructive inflammatory reactions, e.g. in the context of autoimmune diseases. Her research group aims to open up new treatment options by influencing and regulating the immune system in a targeted way. Prof Sawitzki is the principal investigator of the biomarker platform at the "National Clinical Studies Group ME/CFS and Post-COVID Syndrome (NKSG)". She also leads the "Characterisation of autoimmune responses to identify targets in ME/CFS (CURE-ME)" research network, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which aims to investigate how autoimmune processes induced by the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) can lead to a change in the healthy immune response in ME/CFS patients.

In the video, she answers the following questions:

• What is one of the most complex challenges in understanding the immunopathology of ME/CFS?

• How important is interdisciplinary collaboration in unraveling a complex disease like ME/CFS?

• Were you able to take away any new or particularly interesting insights from the conference?

• Which future research approaches in immunology do you consider especially promising?

• Which tools are you referring to specifically?