The project "PART: Patient Advisory Council for Participatory Research" involves the active involvement of people with lived experience of a disease in the research process to improve quality, impact and relevance. This process is designed as a partnership between all stakeholders. Structures for active patient involvement in research will be created to assist in, for example, prioritizing research topics and objectives, creating information materials on research projects, recruiting patients, and interpreting and disseminating research results.

Institutes involved:

Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry, Rostock University Medical Center
Clinic and Polyclinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Rostock University Medical Center, Section for Gerontopsychosomatics and Dementia
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Rostock/Greifswald

Funding body: Robert-Bosch-Stiftung

Funding duration: 2022 - 2025

More information about the project.

With aging comes cellular senescence, and (multi-)morbidity. Cellular senescence is a key driver of an interconnected disease network including cancer and stroke. We wish to utilize systems modelling and bioinformatics, learning from omics and other lab data, to design and develop a biomarker and software kit with a focus on measuring and interpreting senescence related signatures for precise (and early) diagnosis, prognosis, and, ultimately, therapy, of pancreatic cancer and ischemic stroke/thromboembolism. We build upon publications describing how cellular senescence and the senescence-associated secretory phenotype are directly involved in the comorbidity of pancreatic cancer, ischemic stroke, and more generally, of cancer and coagulation problems. We propose observational human studies for pancreatic cancer and ischemic stroke, measuring senescence markers in particular, preparing the power analyses and the companion diagnostics for larger interventional trials. For pancreas, we propose co-culture studies of cancerous and stellate cells, and a mouse cancer allograft model. For stroke, we study brain slices and stroke recovery in mice. High-throughput gene expression and protein array data are taken from blood and tissue of mice, and from blood of human, to allow the bioinformatics to extrapolate protein expression and pathway activation for the inaccessible tissue of humans, providing optimized input to machine learning of the best sets of biomarkers.

PI University Medical Center Rostock: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Georg Fuellen

Funding body: BMBF

More information about the project.

The goal of the overall project is the digitalisation of teaching in the field of nursing and health management. To achieve that, existing lectures will be recorded and organised in a semantic structure, so that at the end of the project, the lecture materials will interactively support both on-site lectures and distance learning. Furthermore, case-based dialogue system will be provided that will help the students to learn how to practically cope with different nursing cases.

PI University Medical Center Rostock: Prof. Dr. med. Stefan Teipel

Funding body: Eu­ro­pean So­cial Fund (ESF)

More information about the project.

The SMARTGEM project aims to enable effective, time-saving and cost-saving treatment of common migraine headaches: patients can use their smartphone app (M-sense) to document their headaches and identify potential triggering factors.

PI University Medical Center Rostock: PD Dr. med. Tim Jürgens

Funding body: Innovationsfonds des Gemeinsamen Bundesauschuss 

More information about the project.

In the study AgeGain, cognitively healthy older people complete four weeks of computer-based cognitive training. The dementia researchers under the direction of Prof. Stefan Teipel at the University Medical Centre Rostock measure the participants’ cognitive performance, brain structure and functioning as well as physical activity. AgeGain aims at identifying the neurobiological signs that predict if a person is able to transfer the improvement in trained exercises to other tasks that have not been practiced. This is essential, since cognitive training is ultimately intended to enhance cognitive functions needed for activities of daily living, in order to maintain independency and social participation in old age. In participatory workshops, the AgeGain participants additionally get the opportunity to actively analyse their own data.

The study is conducted in collaboration with three centres: the University Medical Center Mainz, the University Hospital Cologne and the German Sport University Cologne. AgeGain started in 2016. It is funded for a duration of four years by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (grant number: 01GQ1425A).

PI University Medical Center Rostock: Prof. Dr. med. Stefan Teipel

The aim of this project is to clarify the mechanisms of action of deep brain stimulation in dystonia, to define stimulation targets and stimulation paradigms, and to identify therapeutic success markers. We hypothesise that deep brain stimulation improves pathophysiological processes of dystonia, specifically synaptic / cellular plasticity, inhibitory tone and network oscillations via specific network changes, depending on target structure and stimulation parameters. We will therefore analyse the underlying mechanisms of deep brain stimulation, narrow down effective stimulation parameters, identify early biomarkers of therapeutic outcome, and analyse and model the effects of deep brain stimulation on the extended basal ganglia network.

PI University Medical Center Rostock: Prof. Dr. med. Rüdiger Köhling

More information and contact.

Parkinson's disease is characterised by typical motor symptoms and various non-motor symptoms such as depression and dementia, which are conceivably related to defective neuronal plasticity. Although deep brain stimulation is meanwhile a routine procedure in advanced Parkinson's disease, the mechanisms behind its effects on non-motor symptoms remain elusive. We here propose to investigate the mechanisms of deep-brain stimulation related to the interplay between cellular brain plasticity and non-motor symptoms in a rat model for Parkinson's disease. The results will contribute not only to the understanding of actions of deep-brain stimulation, but also to knowledge of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying depression and cognitive dysfunction.

PI University Medical Center Rostock: Prof. Dr. med. Alexander Storch

More information and contact.