Since the establishment of the Department, immunology has become an independent subject in the educational program of the University of Debrecen and gives lectures, demonstrations and practices for students in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, assistants of medical diagnostics and laboratory research, public health, physiotherapy as well as molecular biologists. The teaching activity also covers the organization of elective and PhD courses on selected topics of Immunology. Supervision of university theses and PhD works of these students is also part of the Department's educational assignments. Besides basic research the department also carries out applied research activity and methodological developments.
The Department warrants an interdisciplinary approach and thinking in the training of graduate and PhD students among them foreign students recruited from all over the world. The Department is member of the Research Centre of Molecular Medicine (RCMM), an EU nominated Network of Excellence, it became the associate member of the DC-THERA (Dendritic Cells for Novel Immunotherapies) FP6 program, and of the Cross-Talk Marie-Curie PhD program and participated in the FP7 TORNADO project focusing to the regulatory functions of DC upon interaction with the gut microbiota. With the support of the EEA Norway Grants the Department also contributed to a collaborative stem cell research program currently focusing on the impact of mesenchymal stromal cells on dendritic cell functions. In the framework of a recent collaboration with the Universitatea Sapientia we are also involved in a R&D project entitled ’Control of dendritic cell functions by anti-inflammatory and cell death signals’.