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World Health Summit: DZGs holding Panel Discussion about Translational Medicine

The German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) together with the other five German Centers for Health Research (DZG) and the Federal Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF) will be part of a panel discussion at next week’s World Health Summit in Berlin: “What is translation in medicine and how to promote it? Different models in different countries”. The DZG speakers will be joined by experts from the international translational research community, i.e. from US (NIH), France (INSERM) and the European Commission, to share perspectives on translational medicine in their respective countries or organizations. The event will be chaired by Hans-Jochen Heinze, head of Behavioral Neurology at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Magdeburg and BMBF State Secretary Georg Schütte.

The 90 minutes discussion will be about crucial questions like “What are the goals of translational medicine?”, “Where are the major roadblocks?”, “When is industry participation appropriate or necessary?” and “What is the future of translational medicine?”.
For the DZD, board member Martin Hrabé de Angelis will present the translational circle as a role model at the DZD including examples for partnerships in interdisciplinary teams, even starting with young scientists growing up in those peer groups and getting to know collaboration as a usual procedure.

Like the other DZG Centers, the DZD too is bundling existing expertise and thus makes a significant contribution to closing knowledge gaps and improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases which are widespread in the population. The research policy objective is the close collaboration of basic research with clinical research – always oriented on patient needs and indications. The close ties and the associated expansion of existing research structures will enable translational research and thus a faster transfer of research findings into clinical practice.

The DZGs were established by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research starting in 2009 as long-term, equal partnerships between non-university research institutions and universities with university hospitals. The German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases, the German Centre for Diabetes Research, the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research, the German Centre for Infection Research, the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research and the German Center for Lung Research are working together in order to share experiences and exploit synergies.