Technische Universität München
Major project for Munich neurosciences
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
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NEWS RELEASE
CLINSPECT-M: Clinical mass spectrometry center for molecular brain research
Major project for Munich neurosciences
In a joint large-scale project, Munich scientists from proteomics, computer science and medicine investigate the causes of disorders of the central nervous system, how they can be diagnosed and how treatment response can be monitored. To this end, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) provides funding of 6 million euros to set up a clinical mass spectrometry center in Munich (CLINSPECT-M) for an initial period of three years.
"The goals of the project are to better diagnose severe neurological disorders, to understand their molecular causes and to monitor the course of therapy. High-performance mass spectrometry can make a decisive contribution to this", explains Prof. Bernhard Küster, professor of proteomics and bioanalysis at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and co-spokesperson of the research consortium.
Mass spectrometry permits the simultaneous and quantitative determination of minute quantities of thousands of biomolecules from tissues or body fluids. Such molecular profiles for proteins will now be brought into clinical use for the first time.
New insights into the diagnosis and monitoring of disease
Munich is one of Germany's leading centers of neuroscience. The scientists involved in the new consortium intend to demonstrate that mass spectrometric protein analysis is suitable for the detection of clinically usable biomarkers.
The partners involved are TUM and its University Hospital 'rechts der Isar', the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) with its University Hospital, the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. The partners will initially be funded with approximately 6 million euros over the next three years.
"As a core element of 'TUM Agenda 2030' - our strategic vision for the future -, this powerful cooperation in the clinical neurosciences constitutes a significant advance in systematically uniting Munich researchers as part of our ONE MUNICH strategy," says Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann, President of TUM.
The members of the consortium 'Clinical Mass Spectrometry Center Munich (CLINSPECT-M)' see an extremely high demand for biomarkers for diagnosis, therapy decisions and monitoring of therapy response.
Everything revolves around the brain
The Clinspect-M network covers four major areas of application in medicine:
?Multiple sclerosis: protein profiles of the cerebrospinal fluid of 4,000 patients should help physicians to find disease-specific fingerprints that can be used in clinical diagnosis.
?Alzheimer's disease: clinical studies involving hundreds of patients will be used to find biomarkers that indicate whether a drug is effective or not.
?Stroke: the examination of thousands of patient samples will identify proteins that indicate brain damage caused by a stroke and distinguish stroke from other causes.
?Brain tumors: hundreds of cancer patients are examined with the aim of finding molecular targets for personalized therapy decisions.
"By using bioinformatics to bring together medical information and data from mass spectrometry, we will gain a better understanding of the complex interrelationships between these diseases and translate this understanding into medical practice," explains co-spokesperson Prof. Daniel Teupser, Director of the Institute of Laboratory Medicine at LMU.
More Information:
With its initiative "Research Nodes for Mass Spectrometry in Systems Medicine", the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) supports the implementation of the latest technologies in medical practice. In a highly competitive procedure, four consortia from Munich, Berlin, Heidelberg and Mainz were selected from around 30 applicants.
In addition to BMBF funding, the project also receives financial support from the Free State of Bavaria, TUM and LMU.
The Excellence Cluster Synergy is also a cooperative venture between TUM and LMU.
High resolution images: https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1537625
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is one of Europe's leading research universities, with around 550 professors, 43,000 students, and 10,000 academic and non-academic staff. Its focus areas are the engineering sciences, natural sciences, life sciences and medicine, combined with economic and social sciences. TUM acts as an entrepreneurial university that promotes talents and creates value for society. In that it profits from having strong partners in science and industry. It is represented worldwide with the TUM Asia campus in Singapore as well as offices in Beijing, Brussels, Cairo, Mumbai, San Francisco, and São Paulo. Nobel Prize winners and inventors such as Rudolf Diesel, Carl von Linde, and Rudolf Mößbauer have done research at TUM. In 2006, 2012, and 2019 it won recognition as a German "Excellence University." In international rankings, TUM regularly places among the best universities in Germany. www.tum.de