Institutes

Carl Ludwig Institute of Physiology​ is divided into three departments that use modern electrophysiological, microscopic, and molecular biological methods to study both the physiology and pathophysiology of nerve and glial cells. It is one of the world's leading institutes with regard to the development of new methods for investigating synaptic transmission. The Institute is integrated into the research priorities of Leipzig University: "Brain and Mental Disorders" and "Molecular and Cellular Communication". Doctoral students are networked in the graduate school "Brain Dynamics". Research at the Institute is generously supported by both the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the European Research Council (ERC). The Institute is involved in several collaborative projects (e.g. the research group FOR3004 "SYNAPS" and the priority programme SPP1757). There are close collaborations with the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine in Göttingen as well as with groups in Japan, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Israel, and the US.

Every year, the Institute teaches several hundred students of human medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy. Lectures, practical courses, and seminars with clinical relevance are offered in the compulsory and elective subject areas.​

At the Innovation Centre Computer-Assisted Surgery (ICCAS)​, computer scientists, engineers, and physicians develop modular software solutions that increase both efficiency and safety in the operating theatre. New information technologies and application-oriented assistance technology are being developed for this purpose. Through innovative research for the high-tech operating theatre, the centre at the Faculty of Medicine of Leipzig University has established itself as a leading international medical technology institute. The specific needs of the medical staff in the operating theatre are taken into account, comprehensive patient data is compiled, and the work flow is documented. The profile areas "Model-based automation and integration", "Digital patient and process model", and "Multimodal intraoperative imaging" as well as "Non-invasive image-guided interventions" highlight the breadth of research work at ICCAS. The centre is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the innovation initiative "Enterprise Region" for the new Federal States.​

Anatomy has a central position in the medical profession and in medical research. The institute is divided into different research groups that deal with degenerative processes at the blood-brain barrier, adipose tissue biology, hypothalamic starvation regulation, microglial degeneration, the role of microglia in synaptic pruning, infertility in obese patients, susceptibility assays with organotypic tumour slice cultures, macroscopy, diabetic neuropathy, and glial chemokine signalling. The scientists of the institute are involved in various national and international projects to which it contributes electron microscopic studies and mouse phenotyping in particular. They publish extensively with the clinics of the University of Leipzig Medical Center and the other preclinical institutes. The Institute of Anatomy​ is represented with three projects in SFB 1052 and one project in the IFB Adiposity Diseases and has a core unit for electron microscopy and a brain bank.​

The Institute provides all curricular teaching for students of human and dental medicine: dissection course and histology course as well as seminars in general anatomy and neuroanatomy with the corresponding lectures. ​

The Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology (IMISE)​ is part of the Faculty of Medicine and the University Hospital of Leipzig University. Founded in 1994, it now draws on a wide range of expertise in research and practice for medical informatics, clinical trials, medical biometrics, dynamic modelling, and bioinformatics. Measured in terms of third-party funding and publication activities, the Institute is one of the most successful institutions of its kind in Germany.

Together with its clinical partners, the IMISE is active in numerous national research consortia in the fields of cancer, heart disease, infectious diseases, and intensive care medicine. These are funded by the Ministry of Research, the German Research Foundation (DFG), and German Cancer Aid as well as partly by industry.​

The Institute of Medical Physics and Biophysics​ is one of the clinical-theoretical institutes at the Faculty of Medicine. The main focus of the research work is on molecular biophysics with a methodological focus on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In particular, the focus of interest is membrane proteins such as receptors and proteases, regulatory proteins and their complexes with glycosaminoglycans, and medically relevant amyloids. Another focus of the work is tissue regeneration based on the effect of cytokines. We also work on immunological topics for the termination of chronic inflammations, questions of nanomedicine, and targeted drug transport as well as metabolomic studies on animal models of neurodegenerative diseases. The Institute in involved in numerous national and international collaborations. It is involved in numerous international and national collaborative projects – in particular, four Collaborative Research Centres and a DFG research group. Within the university, the Institute is involved in the research foci "Modern Diseases", "Brain and Mental Disorders", and "Molecular and Cellular Communication" through active participation in major Leipzig-based collaborative projects.

The institution takes over the curricular teaching of physics for students of human medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy. Teaching export is provided for the study programmes biochemistry, biology, and computer science.​

The Institute of Pharmacy​ is composed of two departments: Pharmaceutical Technology (headed by Michaela Schulz-Siegmund) and Clinical Pharmacy (headed by Thilo Bertsche).

Prior to 2019, the three areas of Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Biology, and Pharmacology and Toxicology were also integrated into the Institute. Pharmaceutical/Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Biology are now part of the Institute for Drug Development. Pharmacology and Toxicology are now part of the Rudolf Boehm Institute. All areas are still jointly responsible for teaching.

The new model study programme in pharmacy, which has been based at the Faculty of Medicine since the winter semester of 2017/18, is the first of its kind in Germany. This is reflected in interdisciplinary modules such as "Biochemistry for Pharmacists", "Pharmaceutical Chemistry for Biochemists", and "From Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient to Drug" for Master's students in Biochemistry and Biology. The teaching pharmacy and the medication management internship as well as the interdisciplinary/multi-professional teaching in clinical pharmacy are also valuable resources for students. All this offers the chance of a broad, interdisciplinary education. About 50 students are enrolled every year in the winter semester.​

The Institute of Forensic Pathology is divided into three working areas: In addition to research and teaching, the area of responsibility also includes legal medicine services in north, central, and south-west Saxony. The Institute offers a comprehensive range of legal medical diagnostics and scientific assessment, including the specialist areas of forensic medicine, molecular genetics, and toxicology.

The focus of the research work concentrates on gene and protein expression after craniocerebral trauma, mutation analysis for SNP detection in Long QT Syndrome (LQTS), molecular genetic studies on historical skeletons, and individual human odour as forensic evidence.

In the area of teaching, lectures, seminars, and practical courses take place at the Institute. The Institute offers space for three students per practical year tertial and is thus at the top in Germany. The postgraduate programme "Toxicology and Environmental Protection" is also offered.​

The Institute of Social Medicine, Occupational Medicine and Public Health deals with topics at the interface between medicine and society. These include the epidemiology of cognitive and depressive disorders in old age, the determinants of primary care practice and the care needs of the elderly and special patient groups, the review of innovative care interventions, and attitudinal research. The Institute is intensively networked with researching university units nationwide through five large BMBF joint research initiatives. In the profile area "Civilisation Diseases", the Institute coordinates the cognition part of the LIFE health study together with the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. With regard to the focus on "brain and psyche", care interventions (e-health) for depression and PTSD are carried out in cooperation with psychosomatic medicine.

The teaching profile of the institute is quite broad and includes curricular teaching in the subjects of social and occupational medicine as well as overall organisational responsibility for three cross-sectional areas with teaching content: "Health Economics, Health System, Public Health Care", "Prevention and Health Promotion", and "Rehabilitation, Physical Therapy, and Natural Remedies".​

The Institute for Drug Discovery at Leipzig University integrates innovative and computational approaches to therapy design and drug discovery with experimental validation and optimisation.

In particular, we develop and use new algorithms for the extraction and development of active pharmaceutical ingredients and biologic agents such as antibodies and vaccines. To do this, we use the Rosetta software suite (www.rosettacommons.org) as well as the algorithms for machine learning in the BioChemicalLibrary (BCL, www.meilerlab.org). We are working with scientists in Leipzig and around the world in order to apply these new algorithms to urgent human health challenges, including cancer, infectious diseases (e.g. influenza and HIV), diseases that affect the brain (e.g. schizophrenia and addiction), cardiac arrhythmias, and obesity. Another focus of our research addresses the urgent need for new antibiotic leads through computational genome mining approaches. In order to effectively support the drug development cycle, the Institute for Drug Development is able to produce, characterise, and test these active substances as well as biologic agents in-house. In order make our approach of rational, computational therapy design possible in the first place, we collaborate with others in order to determine the structure of crucial human protein targets and pathogens using limited experimental data in silico.

We are also involved in teaching for the model course in pharmacy recently integrated into the Faculty of Medicine at the state examination level and in other study programmes. We are particularly interested in developing new teaching formats that combine concepts from basic research and modern drug development with a focus on clinical application.

The Institute for Drug Development consists of the departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry (headed by Jens Meiler, www.meilerlab.org) and Pharmaceutical Biology (headed by Leonard Kaysser) as well as further research groups for "Vaccines and Antibodies" (Torben Schiffner), "Computational Structural Biology" (Georg Künze), and the "ChemCore" for organic synthesis (Maik Tretbar).​

Founded in 1906 and named after its first director in 1938, the Karl Sudhoff Institute is the oldest medical history institute in the world. Its first two directors paved the way for today's professional medical history. The research of the institute focuses on the cultural and social history of medicine, body history, cultural contact research, and object history/medical history collections.

The Karl Sudhoff Institute teaches medical terminology to students of human, dental, and veterinary medicine as well as in the cross-sectional area "History, Theory, Ethics of Medicine" of human medicine, the history of dentistry, and the history of veterinary medicine.

The Paul Flechsig Institute​ is a research institute of the Faculty of Medicine at Leipzig University in the field of neuroscience. The research interests of the institute include cellular and molecular aspects of neurodegenerative diseases as well as the pathophysiology of glial responses in the retina. The Institute is closely networked at the national and international level. This is evident from its extensive and continuous participation in both national and international collaborative research. It forms a central interface between partners in clinical neuroscientific research, basic research, and applied research in the neuroscientific profile area of Leipzig University, "Brain Dynamics", as well as the research focus "Brain and Mental Disorders".

In preclinical training in human medicine, the elective subject "Cellular and molecular methods of experimental neuroscience" is offered. In clinical training, these are the lecture "Medicine of the Ageing Human" as well as POL tutorials in the areas of "Emergency Medicine", "Medicine of the Ageing Human", and "Infectiology and Immunology".​

As subjects central to the molecular, cell biological, and medical life sciences, pharmacology and toxicology entail investigating interactions between endogenous and exogenous substances and biological systems. An important goal of modern pharmacology is elucidating the molecular relationships in cellular signal recognition and transduction, identifying interesting target structures for future drug development, and searching for and optimising active ingredients in order to address these target structures. For this purpose, electrophysiological investigations on primary cell cultures and recombinant cell models, cellular imaging, academic high-throughput screening, immunohistochemical-morphological methods, and in vivo pharmacological methods are used. Within the framework of several DFG-funded projects, the regulation and function of transient receptor potential (TRP) channels and G protein-coupled receptors are being investigated.

The profile of the Clinical Pharmacology Unit is composed of three main areas: the functional analysis of tumour-relevant genes, the development of new RNA-based therapeutic strategies (including their formulation in nanoparticles), and drug analysis in biological samples, clinical pharmacokinetics, and drug therapy counselling. The research of the department thus concentrates on the research focus "Molecular and Cellular Communication" at the Leipzig University with a particular focus on oncology and nanoparticle therapeutics.

Curricular teaching includes lectures, courses, and bedside teaching for students of human medicine and dentistry as well as lectures and practical courses for students of pharmacy.​

The Rudolf Schönheimer Institute of Biochemistry​ at the Faculty of Medicine is divided into the Chairs of General Biochemistry and Molecular Biochemistry. The Institute conducts curricular teaching in the preclinical subject of biochemistry for student of medicine and dentistry with main lectures, seminars, practical courses, and elective subjects.

The Institute is firmly integrated into three of the four bioscience profile areas. The main focus of the research work is cellular signal transduction with emphasis on G-protein-coupled receptors, mechanoceptive, and synaptic signal transduction as well as the evolutionary adaptation of signal transduction components. The structure and function of enzymes of glycolysis are also analysed. The research groups cooperate nationwide in third-party funded projects (e.g. within the framework of the ongoing research group FOR2149 and the Collaborative Research Centres SFB1052 and SFB1423). There is close international cooperation with Vanderbilt University as well as with numerous groups in Sweden, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Israel, and the US.​​

The Institute of General Medicine is concerned with the education of medical students and research on general medical issues. In particular, it researches the influence of general medical courses on students' perception of the subject and their choice of career as well as the testing and introduction of innovative teaching methods. The Institute coordinates various projects in order to introduce students to medical work in a general practice or in a rural medical practice during their training. These include LeiKa, MiLaMed, and the Competence Centre for Continuing Education in General Medicine Saxony.

The Institute of General Medicine supervises medical students throughout the various stages of their studies. The compulsory curriculum includes the main lecture, the block practical course, and courses in the cross-sectional areas.​