DZG Magazine SYNERGIE on “Intelligent Medicine” published

The analysis of large datasets enables more precise diagnoses, treatment, and even prevention of widespread diseases. The new issue of SYNERGIE describes the research approaches taken by the German Centers for Health Research (DZG). The contribution from the DZL focuses on the Human Lung Cell Atlas.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also revolutionizing health research: it opens up new opportunities for identifying, understanding, and treating diseases more effectively. AI can analyze complex datasets in no time, supporting more accurate diagnoses and personalized treatment approaches. The DZG are leveraging AI at many levels, continuously gaining new insights. As with every issue, the DZG reports on recent successes in translational health research.

For this issue, SYNERGIE interviewed Dr. Malte Lücken, group leader at the Institute of Lung Health and Immunity at Helmholtz Munich. He is leading the development of the Human Lung Cell Atlas, the first atlas of its kind to integrate data from many datasets for a larger organ. Malte Lücken explains how the impulses from the COVID-19 pandemic and AI methods made this pioneering work possible.

In the cover story, Dr. Raphael Majeed, spokesperson for the DZG working group on Research IT and head of DZL’s Central Data Management, explains the importance of the DZG agreeing on a unified clinical dataset. This dataset is now being collected for all study patients across the centers.

In the section “Faster to Application” on translational success, the DZL contributes a pioneering achievement: under the leadership of Prof. Felix Ringshausen, the first German-language guideline “Management of Adult Patients with Bronchiectasis” was adopted. Since the fourth funding period, the DZL has focused on the previously under-researched disease of bronchiectasis.

The DZL research highlight in this issue comes from the team of Dr. Jan Böttcher and Prof. Sebastian Kobold. They discovered that Prostaglandin E2, a substance increasingly secreted by tumor cells, weakens the immune defense against cancer. This insight could improve future tumor therapy.

About SYNERGIE:
“Research for Health” – under this motto, the German Centers for Health Research publish the SYNERGIE magazine twice a year, reporting on projects and successes in translational research. SYNERGIE is published in German.

You can read the individual articles from the new SYNERGIE on the website (https://dzg-magazin.de/) or in the e-reader layout (https://dzg-magazin.de/e-reader-ausgabe-2-2024/). For a tactile experience, you can subscribe to the print edition: https://dzg-magazin.de/abonnement/.