Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Gene Center LMU

University Hospital, LMU

Department of Nuclear Medicine

Department of Radiology

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) is recognised as one of Europe’s premier academic and research institutions and was the most successful in the German Universities Excellence Competition. It was also the highest ranked German university in the 2014 Times Higher Education (THE) ranking. LMU has a strong focus in Translational Medicine with multiple DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centres. Moreover, LMU participates in all six National Centres of Health Research. The Institute of Molecular Animal Breeding and Biotechnology (MABB) at the LMU Gene Centre has a strong focus on the development, validation and implementation of genetically modified pigs as models for human diseases (mainly diabetes and obesity) and as donors of cells, tissues and organs for xenotransplantation. MABB has established a large new facility for up to 1000 genetically modified pigs, the Centre for Innovative Medical Models (CiMM). The department of Nuclear Medicine (LMU-NUK) at LMU is one of the largest departments of nuclear medicine in Germany, providing state-of-the-art instrumentation for clinical (PET/CT, SPECT/CT) and pre-clinical (PET) nuclear imaging. A GMP facility for radiopharmaceutical production including cyclotron is operated on campus.

Research interests

LMU Munich’s long-term goal is to become one of the most highly visible universities worldwide in all of its four subject groups – Humanities and Cultural Sciences; Law, Economics and Social Sciences; Natural Sciences; and Medicine. LMU Munich therefore aims to attract outstanding academics at all career levels to the University, to support innovative research ideas, and to further develop its Governance and Equality concepts.

The nine Focus Areas constitute internationally established interdisciplinary fields of research, to which the participating research groups have been making significant contributions for quite some time.

• Ancient Studies
• Area Studies with an emphasis on Eastern Europe
• Nanosciences
• Origin of the Universe
• Photonics and Quantum Optics
• Molecular Biosystems
• Neurosciences
• Protein Sciences
• Translational Health Science

Prof. Dr. Eckhard Wolf

Prof. Dr. Eckhard Wolf

Prof. Dr. Eckhard Wolf is head of MABB and CiMM and has long-standing expertise in the generation and characterisation of genetically tailored large animal models, especially pigs. He is Action Chair of COST Action BM1308 “Sharing Advances on Large Animal Models – SALAAM” (www.salaam.genzentrum.lmu.de/) and Speaker of the DFG-funded Transregional Collaborative Research Centre 127 “Biology of Xenogeneic Cell, Tissue, and Organ Transplantation – from Bench to Bedside” (www.klinikum.uni-muenchen.de/SFB-TRR-127/de/). Wolf is also an Associated Member of the German Centre for Diabetes Research (DZD) where he runs a large animal model platform for translational diabetes research. All these existing activities generate critical knowhow and important assets (such as genetically engineered diabetic pigs or pigs expressing immunomodulatory proteins) that will markedly benefit the iNanoBIT programme. Wolf has > 400 publications and an h-index of 57. He will lead WP3.

Prof. Dr. Sibylle Ziegler

Prof. Dr. Sibylle Ziegler

Prof. Dr. Sibylle Ziegler is a physicist at LMU-NUK. Based on her long-standing experience in PET detector development, system characterisation, and pre-clinical data analysis of nuclear medicine images, she will contribute to the definition and characterization of imaging equipment. Furthermore, she will contribute to the quantitative analysis of multimodal imaging signals. She will lead WP5.
Prof. Dr. Clemens Cyran

Prof. Dr. Clemens Cyran

Prof. Dr. Clemens CyranProfessor of Radiology at LMU-RAD, is heading the Laboratory of Experimental Radiology and is attending physician at the Department of Radiology. With more than 10 years of experience in preclinical multimodality functional and molecular imaging Prof. Cyran is contributing to the experimental planning and quantitative parameter analysis in the identification and validation process of qualified imaging biomarkers of cell vitality and functionality.