Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Armin Braun, is Division Director of the Preclinical Pharmacology and Toxicology of the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine. His main focus is the preclinical development and evaluation of new drugs for airway and immune diseases. Both safety and efficacy testings are performed under highest quality standard including GLP. He is deputy head of the Fraunhofer GLP facility in Hannover. Partners are the major pharmaceutical and biotech companies from Europe, US and Japan. Therefore, he has extensive experience with animal models of immune mediated lung disease like asthma, COPD or lung infection. In addition, immunotoxicology is an important field of expertise and he is acting as work package lead in the IMI EU project ImSAVAR (Immune safety avatar: nonclinical mimicking of the immune system effects of immunomodulatory therapies). Based on his knowledge alternative in vitro and ex vivo models are developed. Special focus is given to human organotypic tissue culture systems e.g. using precision cut lung slice (PCLS) technique for testing lung toxicology, immune regulation and infection. In addition, tissue slices from lymph nodes, liver, heart, skin, colon and tumors are used and combined with microphysiological systems (MPS). New developments include the use of iPSC derived macrophages for diagnostic and therapeutic applications.

Immunological diagnosis in preclinical studies is performed by immunohistological staining techniques using confocal microscopy, flow cytometric analysis and biomarker quantification in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and blood. His scientific work is funded by different EU and federal research agencies. He is member of the German center of lung research (DZL) and is coordinating iCAIR (Fraunhofer International Consortium for Anti-Infective Research), a collaboration project between Griffith University, Australia and Medical University Hannover MHH in Germany with Fraunhofer ITEM. Recently the iGUARD (integrated Guided Ultrafast Antiviral RNAi Drug development) was funded by the newly established SPRIND (Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen). Prof. Braun has a strong background in basic research and is involved in several public funded research collaborations e.g. with the MHH where he is acting as a Professor for Immunology of the respiratory tract. He has published more than 150 reports in international journals.