Infectious diseases and cancer are study subjects of major relevance to our societies. In the era of molecular medicine comparative approaches have become an important research area to transfer basic research into therapeutic strategies. Infectious disease and cancer share important features that can be recognized with molecular pathology or NGS and systems biology approaches. We want to raise synergies in education and research to promote a new generation of MSc students trained on our campus under the principle of “One Health – One Medicine”. There is future need, e.g. to establish a curative treatment for veterinarian species, to create test systems for mutations that affect pathopysiologic processes and to gain deeper understanding what the key pathways in infection and cancer have in common. Furthermore, test systems define novel drug targets and that helps to foster translational research in the era of precision medicine. Animal studies within an ethical and legal framework are essential to push biomedical research forward.

As technologies advance with a very rapid speed we live in promising times for new discoveries and novel therapeutic interventions. The University of Veterinary Medicine in recognition of this international trend aims to train students to succeed in this challenging research environment. We are therefore constantly reviewing and modernising our curriculum. We invite you to a two day kick-off meeting to celebrate the launch of the new study program focus on Comparative Biomedicine.

To establish an attractive program for this multi-disciplinary endeavour, multiple institutes of our campus have joined forces. The meeting is also greatly facilitated by the recent integration of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research. We see this approach in the tradition of the pioneer of comparative pathology, Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902). His visionary comment "Between animal and human medicine there is no dividing line – nor should there be. The object is different but the experience obtained constitutes the basis of all medicine." serves as inspiration for us to contribute to modern biomedicine.

We look back on successful years at our campus and we are aware that future successes rely increasingly on international collaboration, access to infrastructure and expert advice. We are convinced that the 2016 meeting will contribute on these important aspects in light of research of infectious disease and cancer. We are therefore honored to welcome you in Vienna. We thank our external speakers to make the meeting attractive.