The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1192 "Immune-Mediated Glomerular Diseases" of the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) will be funded for another four years.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has now approved eleven million euros for this purpose. The aim of the CRC is to learn more about the development and progression of inflammatory kidney diseases and to initiate the development of new therapies.

The Collaborative Research Centre 1192 is led by UKE scientists Prof. Dr. Ulf Panzer and Prof. Dr. Tobias B. Huber from the UKE III Medical Clinic and Polyclinic. Together with around 25 doctors and basic researchers from the UKE, they are working in the CRC to better understand the mechanisms of inflammatory kidney diseases through the application and establishment of state-of-the-art technologies. The focus of their efforts is on developing new treatment concepts for autoimmune kidney diseases in order to be able to prevent the occurrence of kidney insufficiency requiring dialysis more effectively in the long term.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) approved the Collaborative Research Centre in November 2015 and initially funded it with 9.6 million euros. The researchers have now been able to raise a further eleven million euros for the second funding phase, which begins on January 1, 2020. In addition to the III. Medical Clinic, the I. Medical Clinic and the Institutes of Immunology, Experimental Immunology and Hepatology, Pathology, Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine as well as Cellular and Integrative Physiology are involved from the UKE. Further project partners are the university hospitals of Bonn and Jena.

"The approval of the second funding phase documents that the UKE is one of the leading locations in Europe in the field of immunologically mediated kidney diseases. The development of new therapies is of outstanding importance for the large number of affected patients. We want to continue to play a major role in shaping this development," says Prof. Dr. Dr. Uwe Koch-Gromus, Dean of the Medical Faculty and member of the UKE Executive Board.

"In the first four years of the Collaborative Research Centre, we have set a dynamic research phase in motion that for the first time enables us to translate promising findings from immunology and inflammatory medicine into clinical applications for our patients," says Prof. Dr. Ulf Panzer, Head of the Section of Translational Immunology at the Third Medical Clinic and Polyclinic.

"We now have a better understanding of the molecular and immunological processes involved in autoimmune kidney diseases than we did a few years ago. In the foreseeable future, we will be able to offer individually tailored treatments that are more effective and have fewer side effects than previously available therapies," said Prof. Dr. Tobias B. Huber, Director of the III. Medical Clinic and Polyclinic. Prof. Huber is regarded as one of the leading international experts for kidney diseases. He has been head of the III. Medical Clinic since 2017 and has taken over the joint speaker function of the CRC with Prof. Dr. Ulf Panzer from his predecessor, Prof. Dr. Rolf A. K. Stahl (emeritus).

Collaborative Research Centres in the UKE

Collaborative Research Centres (CRCs) are research institutions at universities in which scientists work together across the boundaries of their respective subjects, institutes, departments and faculties within the framework of a comprehensive and scientifically excellent research programme. They enable innovative, demanding, complex and long-term research projects to be carried out by concentrating and coordinating the resources available at a university. Collaborative Research Centres are established by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and are designed for a maximum of three funding periods of up to twelve years. The UKE has four Collaborative Research Centres: CRC 1192, CRC 841 on Liver Inflammation (coordinator: Prof. Dr. Ansgar W. Lohse), CRC 936 on Neurosciences (coordinators: Prof. Dr. Christian Gerloff and Prof. Dr. Andreas K. Engel) and CRC 1328 on Cellular and Molecular Signalling Processes (coordinator: Prof. Dr. Dr. Andreas H. Guse).