Medicine

The Faculty of Medicine has been cooperating with several universities in China since 1981. This collaboration acquired a new basis in 2009, when the Collaborative Research Centre SFB/Transregio 60 “Mutual Interaction of Viruses with Cells of the Immune System – From Fundamental Research to Immunotherapy and Vaccination” was set up. With 5.5 million euros in funding from the DFG and the equivalent of 8.2 million euros from the Ministry of Science and Technology in Beijing, 16 project teams from Essen, Bochum, Wuhan, and Shanghai are working under the direction of Essen to develop a scientific basis for new immunotherapies and vaccination. Furthermore, cooperation agreements are in place with Tongren Hospital Beijing (China), Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Ghuangzhou (China), the Medical Academy Nishnij Nowgorod (Russia), St. Petersburg State University (Russia), the Medical University of Bialystok (Poland), Université Nice-Antipolis (France), Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France), the Cancer Centre Antoine-Lacassagne in Nice (France), the Instituto di Tecnologie Biomediche in Milan (Italy), Tiblisi Medical State University in Tiblisi (Georgia), the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (USA), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle (USA), and the iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences in Cape Town (South Africa).
The researchers of the Faculty of Medicine are also very well networked on a national level. Essen is the only partner of the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research in North Rhine-Westphalia. The “National Cohort”, a long-term follow-up study of 200,000 subjects, aims to investigate the causes of widespread diseases and to improve early diagnosis and prevention. The Faculty of Medicine is also participating in the DFG Research Units “Organometal(oid) Compounds in the Environment” and “Expectation and Con­ditioning as Basic Processes of the Placebo and Nocebo Response”, the DFG Research Training Groups “Modulation of Host Cell Functions to Treat Viral and Bacterial Infections”, “Transcription, Chromatin Structure and DNA Repair in Development and Differentiation”, and “Molecular Determinants of the Cellular Radiation Response and their Potential for Response Modulation”, the DFG Priority Programmes “Shingolipids – Signals and Disease” and “THYROID TRANS ACT – Translation of Thyroid Hormone Actions beyond Classical Concepts”, the BMBF National Genome Research Network, the German Epigenome Programme (DEEP), and the “Seltene Krankheiten” (Rare Diseases) research consortium funded by the BMBF.