Collaborative Research Centre 1607

Healthy eyes are a prerequisite for good vision and this is arguably the most important human sensory function. Ophthalmology is the medical discipline responsible for preserving and restoring eye function and vision. This is generally done very successfully. There are however eye diseases for which the causes are poorly understood and consequently available therapies are insufficient. As most of these eye diseases are age-associated, the prevalence of these under-addressable diseases will increase due to our aging society. Beyond personal hardship and significant losses in quality of life of individual patients, leaving these age-associated eye diseases under-investigated will affect and burden society. Although every third German citizen visits an ophthalmologist once a year, and despite the fact that the fear of going blind is as great as the fear of getting cancer, research funding for ophthalmology is relatively limited. A specialized research center was needed as individual research projects will insufficiently address the challenge.

Our previous DFG research unit 2240 (www.for2240.de; 2015-2023) investigated a variety of age-associated eye diseases. Upon careful analysis we consistently observed two pathomechanisms that are shared among these diseases: faulty cellular immune responses/inflammation and/or pathologic growth or function of blood- and lymphatic vessels (lymphangiogenesis).  This - together with a mounting body of evidence generated by our peers - supports our overall hypothesis that aberrant cellular immunologic pathology/inflammation and/or pathologic regulation of (lymph)angiogenesis drive clinical manifestations of a variety of age-associated  eye diseases. This is true for different anatomical locations within and around the eye and includes common diseases such as age-related maculopathy, dry eye disease and glaucoma, but also rarer diseases such as corneal dystrophies, herpetic keratitis, ocular Graft-versus-host-disease, conjunctival and uveal melanoma. These diseases affect large portions of our population (more than 50% of > 60-years group). The development of new immune- and (lymph)angiogenesis-modulating therapies is needed to fight blindness and disease burden. For that, we need fundamental and translational insights on these two disease drivers.

Our CRC 1607 (funded initially from 1.4.2024- 31.12.2027) is unique since there is currently no other (inter)national center that primarily focusses on the role of lymphatic/blood vessels and immune cells as the cause of, and new therapeutic target in, age-associated ocular diseases. Our  new CRC 1607 is gathered around the perspective that within 12 years, significant progress in disease understanding and translation into clinical care can be achieved.

To achieve this, we propose the following objectives:

• Unravel the disease mechanisms of age-associated eye diseases with a special focus on the role of aberrant cellular immunity/inflammation and (lymph)angiogenesis,
• To develop innovative new treatment concepts based thereon and finally,
• To transfer at least 25% of projects to early pilot patient data in the last funding period.

Tremendous progress has been made in (lymph)angiogenesis and cellular immunity/inflammation research recently. Now is the time to transfer this to specific ocular diseases. We included non-ophthalmic experts in the fields of (lymph)angiogenesis and inflammation research as well as image analysis and artificial intelligence into our CRC, thereby enabling (i) a transfer of external expertise to ophthalmological diseases and (ii) better use of the eye as an easily accessible model system to unravel disease mechanisms relevant even beyond ophthalmology.

This will help us to reach our overarching goal: the development of new therapeutic concepts in this area of high unmet need to alleviate the individual and societal burden of age-associated vision loss.

The CRC 1607 is based on 16 individual projects as outlined below and 5 core units supporting all projects.

To the individual projects please click here

Spokesperson

Prof. Dr. med. Claus Cursiefen, FEBO, FARVO, ML
Department of Ophthalmology

Co-Spokespersons

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Thomas Langmann    
(Vice-Speaker, Speaker Infrastructure)
Department of Ophthalmology

Prof. Dr. med. Verena Prokosch
(Vice-Speaker; Speaker Graduate School and Clinician Scientists)
Department of Ophthalmology

Leadership Team (incl. Speaker, Co-Speakers)

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Felix Bock    
(Co-Speaker Graduate School)
Department of Ophthalmology 

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Katarzyna Bozek
 (INF Project and Chief Information Officer)  
CMMC, Data Science of Bioimages

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Hamid Kashkar     
(Speaker Basic/Medical Scientists)    
Institute for Molecular Immunology

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Alexandra Trifunovic
(Speaker Female Scientists and Diversity Committee)
CECAD, Institute for Mitochondrial Diseases

Sustainability Officer

Priv.-Doz. Dr. med. Simona Schlereth    
Department of Ophthalmology    

Management of the CRC 1607

Claudia Bock
Department of Ophthalmology