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BMBF funds KIARA
With the programme "AI-based assistance systems for process-accompanying health applications", the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding innovative research and development work on interactive assistance systems that support processes in clinical health care using artificial intelligence methods.

Together with the partners Gebrüder Martin GmbH & Co. KG, Tuttlingen, HFC Human-Factors-Consult GmbH, Berlin and the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI), Berlin, we successfully applied with the project "AI-based recording of work processes in the operating theatre for the automated compilation of the operating theatre report" (KIARA).


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Operating theatre reports document all relevant information during surgical interventions. They serve to ensure therapeutic safety and accountability and as proof of performance. The preparation of the OR report is time-consuming and ties up valuable working time – time that is then not available for the treatment of patients.

In the KIARA project, we are working on a system that automatically drafts operating theatre reports. The KIARA system is intended to relieve medical staff: it documents operating theatre activities and creates a draft of the report, which then only needs to be checked, completed and approved. The system works via cameras integrated into operating theatre lamps. Their image data is then analysed with the help of artificial intelligence to recognise and record objects, people and all operating theatre activities. The ambitious system is to be developed and tested in a user-centred manner for procedures in the abdominal cavity and in oral and maxillofacial surgery.

KIARA is intended to continuously learn through human feedback and to simplify clinical processes for the benefit of medical staff by automating the creation of operating theatre reports. The system can also be applied to other operating theatre areas in the future.

The project has a financial volume of € 2.16 million.
The kick-off meeting took place on 16.09.2022 at the Charité.
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Our manuscript "Depletion of donor dendritic cells ameliorates immunogenicity of both skin and hind limb transplants" has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Immunology, section Alloimmunity and Transplantation. Authors are Muhammad Imtiaz Ashraf, Joerg Mengwasser, Anja Reutzel-Selke, Dietrich Polenz, Kirsten Führer, Steffen Lippert, Peter Tang, Edward Michaelis, Rusan Catar, Johann Pratschke, Christian Witzel, Igor M. Sauer, Stefan G. Tullius, and Barbara Kern.

Acute cellular rejection remains a significant obstacle affecting successful outcomes of organ transplantation including vascularized composite tissue allografts (VCA). Donor antigen presenting cells (APC), particularly dendritic cells (DC), orchestrate early alloimmune responses by activating recipient effector T cells. Employing a targeted approach, we investigated the impact of donor-derived conventional DC (cDC) and APC on the immunogenicity of skin and skin-containing VCA grafts, using mouse models of skin and hind limb transplantation.
By post-transplantation day 6, skin grafts demonstrated severe rejections, characterized by predominance of recipient CD4 T cells. In contrast, hind limb grafts showed moderate rejection, primarily infiltrated by CD8 T cells. While donor depletion of cDC and APC reduced frequencies, maturation, and activation of DC in all analysed tissues of skin transplant recipients, reduction in DC activities was only observed in the spleen of hind limb recipients. Donor cDC and APC depletion did not impact all lymphocyte compartments but significantly affected CD8 T cells and activated CD4 T in lymph nodes of skin recipients. Moreover, both donor APC and cDC depletion attenuated the Th17 immune response, evident by significantly reduced Th17 (CD4+IL-17+) cells in the spleen of skin recipients and reduced levels of IL-17E and lymphotoxin-α in the serum samples of both skin and hind limb recipients. In conclusion, our findings underscore the highly immunogenic nature of skin component in VCA. The depletion of donor APC and cDC mitigates the immunogenicity of skin grafts while exerting minimal impact on VCA.

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