Research Report 2000 - MDC

The Helmholtz Association
The MDC is one of 16 research
institutions belonging to the Hermann
von Helmholtz-Association of
National Research Centres. They
pursue long-term governmental
research goals with complete
scientific autonomy. The concentration
of considerable financial and staff
resources, a sophisticated scientific
and technical infrastructure, and
efficient management enable the
Research Centres to deal with
complex scientific and technical
issues and interdisciplinary projects,
to operate large-scale scientific and
technical equipment and also to
develop system solutions.
The Helmholtz Centres perform
scientific and technical as well as
biological and medical research and
development. In the next few years,
the health research activities of the
Helmholtz Association will become
more important and will concentrate
on the great scientific and therapeutic
challenges offered by medicine. In
spite of the great advances that have
been made in medicine, in only about
a third of all known human diseases
can the cause actually be treated,
while the remaining two thirds receive
only symptomatic treatment or cannot
be treated at all. The key areas of
competence of members of the
Helmholtz Association in basic
biomedical research, clinical research
(in collaboration with external partners),
medical technology and “public health”
research is an absolutely crucial
precondition for establishing a major
scientific network which will function
effectively in an interdisciplinary
manner in the long-term.
Figure 9: One of the techniques students learn
in the ”Hands-on Laboratory” is how to isolate
the genetic material DNA from tomatoes. The
laboratory was opened to the public on the
Berlin-Buch Campus in April 1999.
10
The centres of the Helmholtz
Association which are actively
engaged in research into health set up
a scientific network in 1998, “Health
Research Group” in order to develop a
scientific network aimed at
coordinating all the health-oriented
research carried out by the Helmholtz
Association. In addition, via its
representatives on scientific and
politico-research committees, the
group will actively play a part in
decisions involving all health matters
of scientific and political importance,
even acting as an advisor when
required. The Health Research Group
is also an umbrella organization for
the Clinical-Biological Research
Group (Klinisch-Biomedizinischer
Verbund, KBF), which covers in the
context of the Helmholtz Association
clinics as well as university and nonuniversity
institutions such that the
key areas of interest of the KBF
Group are much more oriented
towards clinically important topics.
In the next few years all the following
key areas will be investigated:
• biomedical basic research into gene
regulation, cell biology,
transcription control, cell-cell
interaction and virus-cell
interactions
• functional genome and proteome
analysis, particularly by developing
DNA-chip technology and proteinchip
technology.
• bioinformatics as the basis for the
development of a new form of
theoretical biology.
• tumor immunology, protection
from infection, gene therapy and
new vaccination strategies.
• development of preclinical animal
models
The three Helmholtz Centres, the
German Cancer Research Center
(DKFZ, Heidelberg), GSF-National
Research Center for Environment and
Health (Neuherberg) and MDC, due to
their collective expertise play a key
role as local sites of competence as far
as the German Human Genome
Project is concerned. In all
biomedically oriented Helmholtz
Centres, structures will also be
developed to improve collaboration in
clinical research, since this is the only
way of effectively testing the new
approaches to therapy that are
developed in the laboratory.
The Helmholtz Centres receive 90 per
cent of their basic funding from the
Federal Government and 10 per cent
from the respective host state. They
have a total budget of about 4 billion
DM and a staff of roughly 22,000.