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Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit is an alliance between the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and the Medical Faculties of the University of Heidelberg. Its primary aim is to uncover the molecular basis of disease and to speed the transformation of biomedical discoveries into personalized medicine strategies.

Founded in 2002, the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit (MMPU) comprises ten inter-disciplinary research teams. It is co-directed by Prof. Andreas Kulozik from the Angelika-Lautenschläger Hospital for Children and Adolescents at the University of Heidelberg, by Prof. Matthias Hentze and Dr. Wolfgang Huber (scientist) from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and is housed in the Otto-Meyerhof-Research Center on the Medical Campus of the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

European Molecular Biology Laboratory campus in Heidelberg. Photo: Photolab EMBL
Otto-Meyerhof-Research Center in Heidelberg. Photo: Medienzentrum Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg

Research themes

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Research themes place emphasis on common diseases as well as on rare diseases with a particular medical need.

In 2024 more than 120 international scientists work on the following ten research themes:

  • ‘Chronic Kidney Diseases’ headed by Rainer Pepperkok, Julio Saez-Rodriguez, Mikhail Savitski and Matias Simons.
  • ‘Chronic Pain and Homeostasis’ headed by Rohini Kuner, Robert Prevedel and Jan Siemens.
  • ‘ECM Brain’ headed by Alba Diz-Muñoz and Michael Platten
  • ‘Heart Development and Diseases’ headed by Eileen Furlong and Johannes Backs.
  • ‘Iron homeostasis in health and disease’ headed by Martina Muckenthaler and Matthias Hentze.
  • ‘Microbiota Drug Metabolism and Cancer Therapy’ headed by Matthias Ebert, Tianzuo Zhan and Michael Zimmermann.
  • ‘Molecular Pediatric Oncology’ headed by Jan Korbel and Andreas Kulozik.
  • ‘Stem Cell–Niche Networks in Ageing and Disease’ headed by Caroline Pabst, Judith Zaugg, Anthony D. Ho and Carsten Müller–Tidow.
  • ‘Systems Medicine of Cancer Drugs’ headed by Sascha Dietrich, Wolfgang Huber (scientist) and Junyan Lu.
  • ‘Translational RNA Biology’ headed by Andreas Kulozik and Matthias Hentze.

Selected recent publications

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  • Horvat, NK.; Chocarro, S.; Marques, O.; et al. (2024). "Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Reprogram the Tumor Microenvironment and Reduce Lung Cancer Regrowth after Crizotinib Treatment". ACS Nano. 18 (17): 11025–11041. doi:10.1021/acsnano.3c08335. PMC 11064219. PMID 38626916.
  • Zhou, Y.; Ray, PS.; Stein, F.; et al. (2024). "Systematic analysis of RNA-binding proteins identifies targetable therapeutic vulnerabilities in osteosarcoma". Nat. Commun. 15 (1): 2810. doi:10.1038/s41467-024-47031-y. PMC 10984982. PMID 38561347.

References

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  • MMPU webpage at EMBL[1]
  • MMPU webpage at UKHD[2]