Excellence Cluster REBIRTH
From Regenerative Biology to Reconstructive Therapy

The excellence cluster REBIRTH is multidisciplinary in nature and several academic institutions are involved: the Hannover Medical School works together with the Leibniz Universität Hannover and further institutions to jointly promote innovative research in the field of regenerative medicine.

The excellence cluster REBIRTH combines excellent training with pioneering research. The medical expertise from the Hannover Medical School is complemented with engineering expertise, chemistry, physics, biophotonics and nanotechnology at the Leibniz Universität Hannover. The research association REBIRTH of renowned scientists and doctors has set itself the goal of stimulating organ regeneration. The cluster hereby focuses on the organs blood, heart, lung and liver. How are the processes within the cells genetically controlled and how can these processes be influenced? The researchers want to find the answers to these and similar questions with their work on cells and molecules. Cells are generated under the microscope using the latest procedures and their functions studied. The excellence cluster REBIRTH then uses the findings made here to develop regenerative therapies to help people with heart, lung, blood or liver illnesses. Fundamental biological aspects are linked with technical innovations and the findings are implemented in the clinic, for example in transplant surgery. In the future, complete organs should no longer be transplanted but, instead, only parts of these - namely tissue or individual cells.

Areas of research, particularly in the "Enabling Technologies" include:

• Biophotonics
• Bioprocess technology/ex vivo cell settlement
• Nano engineering and nano materials
• Cell manipulation
• Cell surgery
• Tissue engineering/biohybrid tissue
• 3D implant structures with nano structuring
• Mechanotransduction on/in cells and tissues
• Biothermodynamics on cells, tissues and organs
• Biomedical process technology

The excellence cluster REBIRTH combines the know how of the Hannover Medical School, the Leibniz Universität Hannover, the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, the Laser Centre Hannover, the Fraunhofer Institute of Toxicology and Experimental Medicine, The Helmholtz Centre of Infection Research, the Federal Agricultural Research Centre and the Max Planck Institute Münster. The collaboration between these institutions has grown continuously since the founding of the Centre for Biomedical Engineering in 1999 and has established itself in the ongoing collaborative research centre “Biomedical Engineering” (SFB 599). A further transregional collaborative research centre “Micro and nanosystems in medicine - reconstruction of biological functions” (SFB / Transregio 37) was set up in 2007 and also includes scientists from the universities of Rostock and Aachen.

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