Current third party funded projects

PI: Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Julia Stingl
Project title: StemCellFactoryIII – Untersuchung des ZNS spezifischen Arzneistoffmetabolismus unter Verwendung iPS-Zell-basierter kortikaler Organoide (AP3 und AP4) mutants (subproject P5 of the joint research consortium “Sodium channel‐related pain disorders:   From molecular mechanisms towards personalized treatment”)
Funding source: Europäische Union und das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen im Rahmen des Leitmarktwettbewerbes LifeSciences.NRW, (Fördernummer: EFRE-0800967)
Funding period: 2019 - 2021

Partners within the consortium:Life & Brain GmbH Bonn (lead partner), Fraunhofer Institut for Production Technology Aachen, university hospital Aachen, university hospital Bonn, Lead Discovery Center GmbH Dortmund, P3 aviation GmbH Aachen

A patient individualized drug therapy is of increasing importance as a part of personalized medicine. Choosing an adequate active compound as well as the right dosing for each patient is a key factor for a successful therapy. Recent advances in the research area of reprogramming of cells (e.g. iPS-techniques) allow the investigation of drug effects on patient specific human cells and thereby could contribute to an individualized drug therapy.

The StemCellFactoryIII aims at providing an automated infrastructure for the standardized and secure production of blood-derived, patient specific iPS cells and subsequent genetic modification for personalized predictions of drug effects. In addition, assays for the investigation of CNS-specific drug metabolism by CYP450s in iPS -cell-derived neuronal cell models will be developed. Within this frame, the abundance and activity of drug metabolizing enzymes in cortical organoids will be evaluated. This requires the analysis of the expression of various CNS-specific CYP450 enzymes during the differentiation of the organoids and the determination of the enzyme activity towards model compounds via LC-MS analysis.

The project is funded by the European Union and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the Lead Market Competition LifeScience.NRW (Funding number:  EFRE-0800967).

PI: Ralf Hausmann
Project title: Molecular Dynamics Guided Analysis of Ligand Activation, Ion Permeation and Subtype-specific Ligand Interactions in P2X Receptors
Funding source: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), HA 6095/1-2,
Funding period: 2018-2020
Link: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/236175933

PI: Günther Schmalzing; Co-PI: Ralf Hausmann
Project title: Functional characterization of heterologously expressed pain-related NaV mutants (subproject P5 of the joint research consortium “Sodium channel‐related pain disorders:   From molecular mechanisms towards personalized treatment”)
Funding source: Aachener Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Klinische Forschung (IZKF) of the Faculty of Medicine of RWTH Aachen University
Funding period: 2020-2022
Link: coming soon

PI: Jan-Philipp Machtens (together with Christoph Fahlke, Forschungszentrum Jülich)
Project title: “Anion conduction and secondary active glutamate transport by excitatory amino acid transporters” (subproject of Research Unit 2518 “Functional dynamics of ion channels and transporters – DynIon“)
Funding source: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Funding period: 2017-2020
Link: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/329460548 

PI: Jan-Philipp Machtens
Project title: Decoding sodium channel dysfunction in pain (subproject of the joint research consortium “Sodium channel‐related pain disorders: From molecular mechanisms towards personalized treatment”)
Funding source: Aachener Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Klinische Forschung (IZKF) of the Faculty of Medicine of RWTH Aachen University
Funding period: 2020-2022
Link: coming soon

PI: Jan-Philipp Machtens (together with Angelika Lampert, Physiology, Aachen)
Project title: Machine learning–guided multiscale simulations to study ion channel clusters
Funding source: School of Simulation and Data Sciences (Aachen)
Funding period: 2019-2022
Link: https://www.jara.org/de/forschung/center-for-simulation-and-data-sciences/school-for-simulation-and-data-sciences-ssd/titel-und-betreuer-der-ssd-doktora

PI: Jan-Philipp Machtens
Funding source: Supercomputing Resources provided by JARA-HPC, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Cluster Aix-la-Chapelle (RWTH Aachen)
Link: https://www.jara.org/en/research/hpc