Ways of cooperation
Strong collaborations are essential to unraveling the complex causes of neurodegeneration, and to finding innovative prevention and treatment approaches for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The DZNE cooperates closely with many leading academic research institutions, both within Germany and throughout the world. In addition, the Technology Transfer Office coordinates partnerships with companies in the industrial sector, in areas such as drug discovery/development, brain imaging, diagnostics and advanced computing.
International collaborations
Centers of Excellence in Neurodegeneration Initiative (CoEN): The aim of the initiative is to foster leading edge joint research and exchange activities through the selection and funding of joint pathfinder projects. The initiative was founded in June 2010 by DZNE, Medical Research Council (MRC, UK) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR, Canada), and now also includes partners in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and the Slovak Republic.
National collaborations
Based on its organizational structure, the DZNE contributes to and benefits from its diverse opportunities to network with the expertise and resources of its local partner universities and university hospitals. This networking is particularly crucial for clinical research, since the DZNE as a research center does not offer patient care.
The close cooperation with our local site partners is also reflected in the DZNE's participation in four university excellence clusters:
- ImmunoSensation (Immuno Sensory System), in Bonn
- Synergy/ActiGlia (Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology), in Munich
- NeuroCure, in Berlin
- MBExC (Multiscale Bioimaging: from Molecular Machines to Networks of Excitable Cells), Göttingen
In addition, the DZNE cooperates with other research institutions of the Helmholtz Association and the German Centers for Health Research (DZG), through joint research and educational activities, scientific symposia and media outreach. One example cooperation is the Helmholtz Medical Security and Privacy Research Center, co-founded by DZNE and CISPA; the agenda together with the other Helmholtz health research centers is to develop privacy-preserving methods to manage and share the enormous quantities of data generated by modern human studies.