What Children Teach Us – The Future of Person­al­ized Medicine

Science Evening 2026

​The 11th Science Evening of the Hector Fellow Academy took place on 21 May 2026 under the title “What Can We Learn from Children? The Future of Person­al­ized Medicine” at the Bavar­ian Academy of Sciences and Human­i­ties in Munich and via livestream. Organized in cooper­a­tion with LMU Univer­sity Hospi­tal, the event attracted strong inter­est both on site and online.

Children are not simply “small adults” — they experi­ence illness, health, and medical treat­ment in their own unique ways. A child-centered approach to medicine must take these perspec­tives seriously, listen to children’s voices, and respect their rights. How can insights from pediatric and adoles­cent medicine improve health­care for patients of all ages? Why is it impor­tant to actively involve children in decisions about their health? And what role can children’s rights play in shaping the future of person­al­ized medicine?

The scien­tific host of the evening was Christoph Klein, Profes­sor of Pediatrics and Adoles­cent Medicine and Medical Direc­tor of the Children’s Hospi­tal at the Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospi­tal of Ludwig Maxim­il­ian Univer­sity of Munich.

In his lecture, Josef Penninger, Direc­tor of the Helmholtz Centre for Infec­tion Research in Braun­schweig and Profes­sor at the Medical Univer­sity of Vienna, focused on the close biolog­i­cal connec­tion between mother and child. He illus­trated how the mater­nal body adapts during pregnancy and breast­feed­ing in order to safeguard both mater­nal health and the optimal devel­op­ment of the child.

Christoph Klein then explained how insights gained from treat­ing rare child­hood diseases can contribute to advances in medicine more broadly. Children with rare diseases, he noted, are increas­ingly becom­ing pioneers of precise and individ­u­al­ized medicine — trans­form­ing from the “orphans of medicine” into impor­tant drivers of innov­a­tive thera­peu­tic approaches.

Another key perspec­tive was provided by Claudia Kittel, whose lecture addressed the rights of children and adoles­cents in the medical context. Refer­ring to the UN Conven­tion on the Rights of the Child, she empha­sized that children are rights holders from the very begin­ning of their lives. Involv­ing children and adoles­cents in decisions concern­ing their health is there­fore not only desir­able, but an oblig­a­tion — and an essen­tial step toward better medicine.

The subse­quent panel discus­sion brought together the speak­ers and three repre­sen­ta­tives of the Children and Youth Research Council of the Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospi­tal. Together, they discussed how the perspec­tives, experi­ences, and opinions of young people can be more effec­tively integrated into medical practice in the future.

The next Science Evening of the Hector Fellow Academy will take place on 9 June 2027 in the ceremo­nial hall of the Neue Aula at the Univer­sity of Tübin­gen. The scien­tific host will be Bernhard Schölkopf, Direc­tor at the Max Planck Insti­tute for Intel­li­gent Systems, Profes­sor at ETH Zurich, and Found­ing Direc­tor of the ELLIS Insti­tute in Tübingen.

In cooper­a­tion with