DFG Research Centre to be funded for a further four-year period

DFG Research Centre for 'renewable therapies' to be funded for a further 4 years

The DFG Research Centre for Renewable Therapies at the Technical University of Dresden ("Renewable Therapies: From Cells to Tissues to Therapies - Engineering the Cellular Basis of Regeneration ", CRTD), following a very successful first funding period, is being extended and will be funded for a further four years. This decision was taken by the Joint Committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) at its meeting in Bonn on 8 October. This means that the newest of the six DFG Research Centres can continue its projects until 31 December 2013. Over this period, it will receive altogether approximately -30 million in funds.

The Dresden Research Centre was established on 1 January 2006 and has also been funded since November 2006 under the Excellence Initiative by the German federal and state governments as a cluster of excellence. The institution, in which researchers from the life sciences, natural sciences and engineering sciences collaborate, intends first of all to gain basic scientific results in regeneration and stem cell biology, and in the longer term develop these into new cellular therapies and treatment options for a wide range of diseases. The spectrum of these ranges from metabolism diseases, cancers and diseases of the immune system, as well as diseases of the heart muscle and blood vessels, via diabetes to brain and spinal cord injuries and bone tissue replacement.

The previous work of the Centre in these fields had been reviewed in the spring of this year by a peer review panel consisting of high-calibre international scientists, which subsequently unanimously recommended the further support of the CRTD. Echoing the views of the reviewers, the Joint Committee of the DFG has now also highlighted the excellent scientific work of the Centre. In their view, the results already obtained by the Centre and the resulting publications are "highly visible internationally, and impressive". With its approach and productive capacity, the CRTD is "unique in Europe" and should also be considered among the leading institutions worldwide. It is a testament to the high international eminence of the CRTD that 60 percent of its researchers have been recruited from abroad. Finally, the Centre, which besides the Technical University of Dresden also includes the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and ten other non-university research institutions among its participants, also has a high structure-forming effect for Dresden as a research location.

As well as the CRTD, now extended for a second funding period, the DFG supports five other Research Centres. The Centres "The Ocean in the Geosystem" in Bremen, "Functional Nanostructures" in Karlsruhe and "Experimental Organic Medicine" in W-rzburg were established as long ago as 2001 and after two very successful funding periods were extended in April this year for a third funding period until the middle of 2013. The Centres "Matheon - Mathematics for Key Technologies" in Berlin and "Molecular Physiology of the Brain" in G-ttingen were established in 2002 and will be reviewed again in the coming year following their first extension in 2006. Introduced as a totally novel and particularly strategically designed funding instrument, with their focused scientific competence and their cooperative arrangements between university and non-university institutions the Research Centres also became not least the model for the clusters of excellence in the Excellence Initiative. In the same way as the Dresden CRTD, a total of four of the six Research Centres are also being funded in the meantime as a cluster of excellence, following corresponding supplementary proposals.