Biomedical Science

Chairman: Prof. Dr. Michael Ehrmann

Managing Director: Dr. Heiner Fritzemeier

The Main Research Area of Biomedical Sciences connects basic research in the natural sciences at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) with applicationoriented medical research at University Hospital Essen. It encompasses the Centre for Medical Biotechnology and the Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (see page 78).

The Centre for Medical Biotechnology (ZMB) is an interdisciplinary scientific centre of the UDE integrating medical research at University Hospital Essen and natural sciences on campus.

The 55 working groups within the ZMB are active in biomedical research and are organized in four research programmes:

Oncology
Immunology, Infectious Diseases and Transplantation
Genetics, Developmental, Molecular and Cell Biology
Biomolecular Structure and Function.

The interdisciplinary approach, which combines techniques from (bio)chemistry, genetics, bioinformatics and medicine, as well as structural biology and imaging techniques, provides an opportunity to investigate pathological processes at all stages, from genes, proteins and cells all the way to the living model organism, and ultimately in the patient.

This research focus is complemented by the Erwin L. Hahn (ELH) Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a joint institution of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) and Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RUN). An international team of engineers, natural scientists and medics work together at the Institute. For several years the two universities have been operating one of the few existing 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging systems (MRI). One of the main goals of the Institute is to apply the benefits of high-field MRI to whole body imaging and advance the spread of the technology.

The wide range of established state-of-the-art methods and expertise enables the scientists of the Main Research Area of Biomedical Sciences to understand the mechanisms of disease on the molecular level and to influence the relevant processes using (bio)chemical and biotechnological methods.