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GSC 1091:  Berlin School of Integrative Oncology (BSIO)

Subject Area Medicine
Term from 2012 to 2019
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 194676614
 
Final Report Year 2020

Final Report Abstract

Cancer is a leading cause of death, its incidence linked to aging, a significant challenge for public health, and a major societal threat. Novel therapies that extend cancer patient survival and improve quality of life are the product of decades of intense research. Only concerted scientific efforts in sufficiently supported interdisciplinary research networks and more effective educative structures will further advance clinical cancer care. Molecular and translational oncology represents an internationally visible, dedicated core area of research at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité), which is underscored by the level of publications, German Research Foundation (DFG)-funded program projects, the newly established German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK), the Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCCC), and numerous cancer-related graduate colleges. To further improve research and training in this central medical area with cross-sectional implications for many other fields, the Charité and its mother universities, the Humboldt-Universität (HU) and the Freie Universität (FU), together with five high-profile non-university partner institutions, applied for an international graduate school and research network that integrates basic cancer biology and translational, applicable oncology, termed the “Berlin School of Integrative Oncology (BSIO)”, which was successfully established within the Excellence Initiative (ExIni) in the year 2012. Classic university degree programs in natural sciences or human medicine no longer meet the increasingly complex demands of “personalized cancer medicine” – the emerging goal of treating patients based on their individual molecular tumor determinants. Scientifically, the BSIO, embedded in a strong network of biomedical research expertise in the Berlin metropolitan area, seeks to advance our understanding of malignant growth to new conceptual levels by pioneering experimental and simulatory models that lead to novel diagnostics and innovative therapeutic principles and to make them rapidly available for clinical testing. Regarding its educational goals, the BSIO aims to sharpen scientific thinking and problem solving and offers an interdisciplinary training curriculum in an inspiring environment with novel degree opportunities and various incentives to promote early career development, especially for young female scientists. As its central mission, the BSIO aims to train young Ph.D. and medical graduate students and postgraduate fellows “at the same bench and in the same language”, thereby forming a next generation of cancer researchers for whom barriers of understanding between physicians and natural scientists no longer exist. It is the belief and vision of the BSIO that only the best trained scientists and clinicians capable of seamlessly communicating with each other will cooperatively identify the most demanding problems in clinical oncology, convert them into experimental approaches, unveil underlying mechanisms, and ultimately develop together conceptually novel therapies that will contribute to the elimination of cancer in the clinic.

Link to the final report

https://doi.org/10.2314/KXP:1741402778

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

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