The Institute for Bioinformatics was established in 2010 as the latest member of the Biocenter at the Medical University of Innsbruck and it is dedicated to supporting basic research and teaching in bioinformatics and computational biology. The Institute for Bioinformatics is well equipped both for data processing and management as well as for computational analysis of a broad range of data types, including next-generation sequencing data, proteomics and metabolomics data, and image analysis. It has a state-of-the-art computational infrastructure, which is dedicated to bioinformatics analysis. A number of analytical pipelines, databases and software tools developed by the laboratory and others are installed and continuously maintained.

The research of the Institute of Bioinformatics focuses on cancer immunology. Our aim is to decipher tumour-immune cell interaction by means of a combined computational-experimental approach. We specifically look at the question of how the immune system shapes the mutation spectrum of the tumour, both during progression and after treatment, in patients with colorectal cancer. We use tumour-derived organoids, perturbation experiments and multimodal analysis, including next-generation sequencing, phosphoproteomics and imaging mass cytometry to facilitate precision immuno-oncology.