German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD)
Upon an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Research and Education, Helmholtz Zentrum München has founded the German Center for Diabetes Research DZD e. V in 2009 together with four partner research institutions and the Helmholtz and Leibniz Research Associations. As such, the DZD is the second of the six German Centers for Health Research. Martin Hrabé de Angelis was the leading scientist in the founding and establishment process.
Network partners are:
- German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke, DIfE
Speaker: Prof. Hans-Georg Joost
- German Diabetes Center Düsseldorf, DDZ
Speaker and member of the managing committee:
Prof. Michael Roden
- Helmholtz Zentrum München
Speaker and member of the managing committee: Prof. Martin Hrabé de Angelis
- Paul Langerhans Institute of the University of Dresden
Speaker: Prof. Michele Solimena
- Paul Langerhans Institute of the University of Tübingen
Speaker and member of the managing committee: Prof. Hans-Ulrich Häring
The DZD office is located at the HMGU, which is also the coordinating partner of the network. As a large network of high-ranking research institutions, the DZD is able to approach high-end large scale projects which could not be carried out by either one of the members alone. Under the mission "Research for a future without diabetes", the DZD aims at contributing significantly to the elucidation of diabetes pathogenesis, to health care research, and especially to the development of evidence-based prevention and personalized causal therapies. The IEG and other HMGU institutes lead or collaborate in many of the DZD network research projects and plans to extend its scientific contribution to the DZD even further.
The IEG contributes strongly to the DZD’s research portfolio:
- The Diabetes Mouse Clinic lead by Dr. Susanne Neschen (IEG research group ‘Diabetes Models’) is a large project collaboratively established by the two DZD partners HMGU and DIfE.
- Dr. Gerhard Przemeck and his co-workers (IEG research group ‘Functional Genetics’) participate with the project ‘Functional assessment of the Delta-Notch pathway in the adult pancreas’ in the DZD’s research portfolio.
- The Munich ENU Mutagenesis Project (MEP) lead by Dr. Sibylle Wagner provides a large number of mouse lines exhibiting a metabolically conspicuous phenotype which are to be used as model organisms in various DZD projects.
- The Genome Analysis Center (GAC) lead by Prof. Dr. Jerzy Adamski performs large scale analyses of human populations and animal models contributing to a better understanding on the impact of genome on the metabolic phenotype.
- The Gene Regulation group contributes with gene functional studies in new mouse models (from man to model) and analyses of transcriptomes in collaborative projects with DZD partners.