Center

Cancer is one of the greatest challenges facing modern medicine. In our western society, cancer is the second most common cause of death and the number of new cancer cases worldwide will double in the next 20 years.

The Center for Cancer Medicine at the TUM School of Medicine and Health is a strategically crucial and scientifically central area that combines preclinical, translational and clinical research and teaching at the highest level. The knowledge gained in this way forms the basis for innovative approaches in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. With its interdisciplinary and transsectoral networking, the Center for Cancer Medicine also assumes socio-political responsibility and is strongly committed to improving care not only in exchange with patients (patient empowerment, see below), but also to transporting innovation to the wider population.

The Center for Cancer Medicine integrates various central national structures of excellence in cancer research. As a result, it has been recognized as an oncological center of excellence by German Cancer Aid (Comprehensive Cancer Center Munich TUM (CCC Munich TUM), a founding member and partner site of both the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK) and the Bavarian Center for Cancer Research (BZKF) as well as the pediatric KioNet.

Scientifically, the Center for Cancer Medicine is a decisive component and integrative key center of numerous excellent national and international research initiatives (including four DFG-funded SFBs, multiple DFG, BMBF and ERC projects). Various TUM structural facilities such as the Central Institute for Translational Cancer Research (TranslaTUM), the Center for Preclinical Research (ZPF), the Center for Personalized Medicine (ZPM), the Center for Organoid Systems and Tissue Engineering (COS), the GMP-compliant facility for cellular therapies (TUMCells), the Center for Preventive Medicine (PrevenTUM), the Central Early Clinical Trial Unit (ECTU) (clinical research) as well as the BZKF's Theranostik lighthouse project and an established and fully functional biobank enable the research and application of new and innovative diagnostic and therapeutic concepts. By optimally linking this high level of scientific expertise with structured clinical programs, the Center for Cancer Medicine at TUM offers ideal and innovative treatment options in the interdisciplinary care of oncological patients.

Main research areas:

The main research areas of the Center are:

a) Individualized prevention, early detection and aftercare of diseases and treatment consequences

Modern oncological research and care includes structured primary, secondary and tertiary prevention in addition to treatment. By incorporating established structures in the focus areas of nutrition, exercise, environment and technology as well as prevention (PrevenTUM and TUM Active Onko Kids Network Members, prevention at the CCCM-TUM Cancer Center, accompanying therapy at the CCCM-TUM Cancer Center, patient house), this oncological research area focuses on personalized prevention. It is supplemented by population-based, preventive approaches to cancer research and care, for example in the area of cancer screening (early detection of cancer), the evaluation of cancer registry data or within the framework of national networks of German Cancer Aid (ONCOnnect CCC network).

b) Individualized diagnostics and therapy

This research focus is an important translational pillar and a decisive implementation element of the basic research focus areas. In addition to the important initiation and implementation of innovative study projects, particularly in the Phase I/II area, a knowledge-generating patient care structure in this research area feeds valuable results and impulses back into the basic research areas through standardized and structured correlation of diagnostic high-throughput data (including liquid biopsy) with the analysis of progression and outcome parameters. Important infrastructural prerequisites for this individualized diagnostics and therapy are the Molecular Tumor Board, the Early Clinical Trials Unit (clinical studies, study register), GMP units for the manufacture of cell products and theranostic pharmaceuticals (TUMCells, RadiopharmTUM).

c) Preclinical forward and reverse translation

Forward translation refers to the translation of findings from preclinical models into clinical trials in order to develop fundamentally new therapeutic approaches. Reverse translation deals with the analysis of clinical data in order to generate hypotheses that are then validated in preclinical models. Special emphasis is placed on OMIC technologies, academic drug development, organoids, complex genetic mouse models, post-translational protein regulation and signal transduction (ubiquitin networks, phosphorylation), microbiome, molecular imaging and aberrant intra- and extracellular processes (e.g. immune signaling, programmed cell death, metabolism, genome integrity, cell cycle, microenvironment).

d) Immuno-oncology and cellular therapy concepts

This research focus combines various collaborative and research initiatives of the TUM School of Medicine and Health with the overarching goal of effectively and specifically recognizing and eliminating cancer cells through the body's own immune response. Research into immune signals, microbiome-immune cell interaction and adoptive T-cell therapy are particular focal points here (https://letsimmun.de; https://www.sfb.tum.de/1371/microbiome-signatures/). Innovative infrastructural elements such as the highly developed GMP-compliant "TUMCells" unit, which produces genetically modified T cells for targeted tumor attacks close to the patient, are also a key component of the translational aspects of this immuno-oncological research program.

Population participation and patient empowerment

In all innovative developments, it is particularly important to us to improve the position of the patient through information, participation and co-decision-making. Therefore, another focus of the TUM School of Medicine and Health is "patient empowerment", which defines a process of empowering and strengthening people, priorities and decisions to maintain or regain their own health.

The patient perspective and involvement therefore form the basis for the successful implementation of personalized concepts and therapies. "Patient empowerment" is ensured by the CCCM Patient Advisory Board (CCC Munich Patient Advisory Board), the CCCM Patient House (CCC Munich Patient House) and concepts for participatory decision-making (Shared Decision Making), which enables patients and self-help groups to make decisions together with their medical counterparts on an equal footing and is particularly important in the field of oncology.

Cooperation:

The Center for Cancer Medicine of the TUM School of Medicine and Health is a strategically central and scientifically proven focus area of TUM. By dovetailing with other centers (including "Digital Health & Technology") and schools (in particular the School of Life Sciences, School of Natural Sciences and School of Computation, Information and Technology), the joint resources are optimally used to strengthen the innovation potential. Collaboration with the Department of Chemistry has recently led to the establishment of the new "Center for Smart Drugs", which aims to translate joint new approaches from basic research into innovative approaches to drug development.

The Center is also distinguished by its high level of interdisciplinarity and its institutionalized integration of cancer research with its sister university LMU, the HMGU, the MPI for Biochemistry and, in addition to the TUM Schools mentioned above, with the research centers Munich Data Science Institute, Munich Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Munich Institute for Robotics and Machine Intelligence and the Organoid Center on the Garching campus. There are also very close collaborations with the Helmholtz Zentrum München in the fields of imaging, compound screening and "hit to lead development", artificial intelligence and data science.

By integrating these central research alliances into the Center for Cancer Medicine, decisive scientific impulses are used for translation into the patient in order to offer the best possible prevention and treatment of cancer.  

Contact Person:

• Center Head: Prof. Florian Bassermann, Internal Medicine III, Haematology and Oncology

• Stand-In: Prof. Barbara Wollenberg, Otorhinolaryngology

Two of the biggest challenges of our time are effective, efficient and fair medical care as well as disease prevention. The use and interpretation of biomedical and clinical data through innovative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and the use of autonomous approaches and robotics are the key technologies for meeting these challenges. The use of AI, autonomous technologies and robotics not only serves to develop and integrate new and improved diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive approaches that can be optimally adapted to individual needs, but also serve as perceptible areas of expertise at the School for digital medicine of the future. This digitalization not only brings significant benefits for patients, but also enables improvements in the healthcare system.

Main research areas:

1. Secure, privacy-preserving use of patient data and ethically responsible technology translation - The goal here is to make patient and healthcare data available for medical research purposes and to establish the necessary data management infrastructures. The effective protection and ethical, fair and transparent use of patient data should be ensured. One particular aspect of this is the use of biosensors and wearables, which enable longitudinal and holistic analyses.

2. Identification of new biomarkers and intervention targets - The goal is to use data-driven approaches and multi-modal data (state-of-the-art imaging & omics technologies) to recognize new associations and causal relationships and thereby identify new biomarkers and targets for interventions. The data-driven approach enables integrative analyses for preventive and individualized medicine.

3. Early detection and personalized diagnosis of diseases and disease risks - The development of data-driven approaches and their use enables both the discovery of interrelationships between lifestyle, omics and disease risk and the improved understanding of these interrelationships. This will enable intelligent stratification, which will make it possible to predict the disease risk of individual patients. At the same time, methods for health promotion, prevention and rehabilitation are being developed.

4. Individualized and personalized therapies and interventions - Another research focus is the use of AI and robotics to adapt and optimize individual therapy decisions and to provide individualized therapy concepts. By using digital, patient-specific ("digital twin") models, therapies and treatments are tested in silico and optimized using intra-interventional process and post-interventional outcome parameters in a therapeutic approach.

5. Autonomous systems and robotics - This focus area develops sensor-based infrastructures and digital process models to incorporate autonomous solutions into treatment. This includes purely digital solutions for diagnostics and basic medical care as well as the use of robotic systems for care, transportation, service and intervention.

Collaborations:

The area of "Digital Health & Technology" is one of the School's newest and rapidly growing research areas. There are numerous interdisciplinary activities and projects with other schools (in particular the School of Computation, Information and Technology and the School of Life Sciences) as well as with integrative research centers such as the Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI), Munich Institute of Biomedical Engineering (MIBE), Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) and the BMBF-funded competence center Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML). There are also very close collaborations with the Helmholtz Zentrum München in the fields of imaging, AI and data science.

Contact Person:

• Center Head: Univ.-Prof. Marcus Makowski, Radiology

• Stand-in: Univ.-Prof. Rüdiger Eisenhart-Rothe, Orthopedics

Prevention is better than a cure. This colloquial saying, which has been proven for centuries by countless scientific studies, is at the heart of the Center for Health & Medicine in Society (CHMS) and guides all of the Center's activities. 

The CHMS combines the expertise of health/sports science and medicine with the aim of developing new approaches in the field of prevention of health impairments and contributing to optimal health care by analyzing the organization, management and financing of health and medical care. Our scientific efforts therefore focus on both the individual patient and the population as a whole. 

Using a wide range of data sources and methods, the goal is to generate robust, population-based evidence that is relevant to healthcare policy. The Center is of central importance for the integration process of the new TUM School of Medicine & Health because research topics and methods from the three departments are brought together in an innovative way. The Center currently comprises a total of 23 appointed professors. The collaboration of the partners involved under the umbrella of a center is unique nationally and offers the opportunity to work on current and future topics of prevention and healthcare research in an internationally competitive manner.

The objective of the Center is to research and improve the framework conditions for a healthy life and modern health care. The complementary expertise of the three departments is used to closely interlink the aspects of prevention and healthcare with the topics of basic medical, translational and clinical research.

Main research areas:

• Basic research: Identification of biological, behavioral, psychological and social causes of health/disease and their distribution patterns within and between societies

• Prevention research: development, application and evaluation of preventive/health-promoting measures in various settings and all policy areas, including health literacy and medical education

• Health services research: analysis of health-related care as well as the organization, management, remuneration and financing of health and health care, patient-centered research, public and patient involvement

• Translational research: development and application of innovative strategies for the translation and dissemination of research results into society 

• Medical ethics and theory research: Multidisciplinary research on ethical, theoretical and social science aspects of health and healthcare 

• Research methods: Further development and application of quantitative and qualitative methods of empirical social research, epidemiology and clinical research

These research priorities are addressed in three central working groups:

1. Prevention and Intervention across the Life Course 

2. Health Services Research & Health Economics

3. Global Health & Sustainability

Collaborations:

Health & Medicine in Society is one of the TUM School's newest and rapidly growing research areas. The Center for Health & Medicine in Society is to be seen as a bridging center: On the one hand, it pursues an independent research strategy in the field of health care and prevention research, but on the other hand, it also offers optimal complementary linkage opportunities to the explicitly disease-oriented centers. In this area, there are numerous interdisciplinary activities and projects with other TUM Schools (in particular the School of Social Sciences and Management and TUM Informatics). Members of the Center have already acquired several large consortium projects and research networks in the field of Health & Medicine in Society, both as leaders and as members. These include BMBF structural funding for health services research, BMBF collaborative projects in the field of public health & health literacy, DFG research groups on population health (including the first DFG-funded research group in the field of public health research), a DFG research training group, health research centers, several large GBA-funded consortia and Horizon Europe projects.

Contact Person:

• Center Head: Univ.-Prof. Matthias Richter, Social Determinants of Health

• Stand-in: Univ.-Prof. Volker Mall, Social Pediatrics

Infectious and environmental diseases will become increasingly important in view of increasing international mobility, diverse environmental and food pollution and the ongoing climate change. The Center for Infection, Immunology and Environmental Health researches molecular and immunological principles and is the starting point for translational approaches to improve the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases, allergies, as well as autoimmune, metabolic and tumor diseases.

Main research areas:

• Basic understanding of immune control of infectious agents and tumors as well as (often unwanted) immune activation by environmental factors, including allergies, autoimmune diseases and metabolic diseases

• Investigation of triggers, risk factors and metabolic control of infectious and environmental diseases

• Influence of the microbiome and virome on disease processes

• Translation: development of new concepts for targeted and individualized treatment and prevention 

• Vaccine development

• Modern cell and gene therapies 

• Combating future viral pandemics and containing the spread (multi-resistant infectious agents)

• Utilization of unique synergy effects between medicine, systems biology and new analytical approaches fromdata sciences and artificial intelligence

Collaborations:

The Center is closely linked through the German Centers for Health Research (DZGs; in particular the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), the German Center for Lung Research (DZL) and the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD)), as well as HMGU with its focus on environmental health and metabolic diseases, both with the clinical research institutions in the Munich area and with the TUM Center for Infection Prevention on the science campus in Weihenstephan. Scientists at the Center lead national and international collaborative research activities such as the SFB-TRR 338 LETSimmun or BayCELLator (Bavarian Research Foundation) on cell therapy and immune cell engineering, the SFB-TRR 179 on immune control of viral hepatitis, the SFB 1371 on the microbiome, the SFB-TRR 353 on cell death, the Research Training Group 2668 on immune regulation of allergic and immunological diseases, the Helmholtz Campaign CoViPa on COVID-19 pathogenesis, BMBF-funded consortia on food intolerance and therapeutic vaccination as well as the Bavarian Research Network For-COVID and the diagnostic activities on COVID-19 in the Network for University Medicine, and is involved in numerous other SFBs and consortia. In addition, scientists at the Center lead international consortia such as the EU consortium TherVacB for the development of a therapeutic hepatitis B vaccine, the TUM research presence in Beijing "PYLOTUM" on infection-related tumors and the TUM-Singapore cooperation on new diagnostics and a bilateral doctoral program with Imperial College London on health and the environment.

Contact Person:

• Center Head: Univ.-Prof. Dirk Busch, Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene

• Stand-in: Univ.-Prof. Percy Knolle, Molecular Immunology

Despite intensive research, the brain remains the least understood organ of our body - and at the same time neurological and psychiatric diseases are on the increase. Therefore, one of the central topics of the TUM Faculty of Medicine is to deepen our understanding of the normal structure, function and development of the nervous system and, on this basis, to better understand the pathomechanisms of neurological and psychiatric diseases. Based on these findings, new therapeutic approaches are to be developed and brought into clinical application. In our School, there is close networking between basic research at the systemic level, the development of new technologies for research into the nervous system and clinical-translational research. A special approach in the collaboration networks of our School is the integration of research beyond individual disease patterns. For example, we are particularly studying the question of how inflammation in the brain, as is typical of multiple sclerosis, leads to permanent changes in nerve and supporting/glial cells, and what role such inflammatory reactions also play in classic neurodegenerative diseases. Following on from this, we also want to better understand how such pathologies in the nervous system affect the activity and function of individual nerve cells and their networks.

Main research areas:

The research groups in the Department of Neuroscience focus particularly on the following topics:

(a) Research on neuroimmunological and neurodegenerative diseases: Here the main focus is on a deeper understanding of the immunological causes and neurobiological consequences of neuroinflammation, e.g. the question of which dysregulations of the immune defense underlie multiple sclerosis, and how the damage to, for example, the nerve sheaths or nerve processes takes place. Linked to this is the question of which points of attack there are for improving endogenous regulation and repair processes - and how these could be used in new therapeutic approaches. Conversely, there is a strong focus on the question of how immune cells and supporting cells of the brain contribute to diseases such as Alzheimer's, and what role energy metabolism disorders play in such diseases.

b) Synapse and axon-glia physiology: This research area focuses on how the normal cell biology of the nervous system is maintained and which physiological processes could be used to strengthen repair and compensatory mechanisms that could prevent diseases or mitigate their consequences. It also addresses the question of how processes in the development of the nervous system (e.g. neuro- and gliogenesis, or the normal remodeling of networks in critical phases of development) contribute to later resilience or vulnerability to neurological and psychiatric diseases.

Two further research focuses are based on TUM's particular strength as a center of high-tech development:

(c) Imaging and in vivo imaging from basic to clinical: In this area, imaging technologies from molecular resolution to whole human brain imaging are developed and applied as part of clinical diagnostics. The aim is to visualize the structure and function of the nervous system, its cellular components and their interaction e.g. with the immune system in vivo, both in experimental animal systems such as zebrafish or mice, as well as in patients - in the hope of identifying new biomarkers in imaging that can be understood neurobiologically and used translationally.

d) Systems neuroscience and neurotechnology: Here we pursue the approach of measuring and modeling integrative aspects of the function and dysfunction of the nervous system in animal models and directly in humans in great detail. We work in particular in the areas of sensorimotor function (control and coordination of movements), perception (perception of pain) and cognition (language and memory). Based on network analyses and models, the aim is to determine personalized disease risks and develop technological assistance systems that improve the quality of life of patients with strokes or traumatic or degenerative diseases of the nervous system.

Collaborations:

Neuroscience is a well-established area of research at the School with numerous links to other research centers in Munich. Of particular importance is the collaboration with the LMU, the DZNE and the Helmholtzzentrum München in the context of the Cluster of Excellence "Munich Center for Systems Neurology" (SyNergy), which was established in 2012 and aims to conduct integrated research into neurodegenerative, neuroinflammatory and glio-vascular diseases. In the recently established TUM Innovation Networks "Neurotechnology in Mental Health" and "eXprt", multidisciplinary teams from the neurosciences, engineering sciences and clinical medicine are working on new approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with cognitive and sensorimotor impairments. There are also important collaborations in many other areas with various TUM Schools (e.g. the School of Engineering and Design in the field of neuroengineering, the School of Life Sciences in the field of genomics, proteomics and metabolic research, the School of Computation, Information and Technology for bioinformatics/digital medicine and the School of Natural Sciences in the field of imaging). The Neuroscience Center of the TUM School of Medicine also has numerous collaborative interactions with the two neurobiologically oriented Max Planck Institutes (Biological Intelligence and Psychiatry). The Neuroscience Center of our School is also linked to other national and international centers of neuroscience through established networks (e.g. with the Göttingen site via the Transregio-SFB "Checkpoints of Central Nervous System Revovery" and with the Hebrew University Jerusalem and Imperial College London via the Elite Network Master's Program "Biomedical Neuroscience").

Contact Person:

• Center Head: Univ.-Prof. Mikael Simons, Molecular Neurobiology

• Stand-in: Univ.-Prof. Simon Jacob, Translational Neurotechnology