BMBF project

The Research Campus STIMULATE researches and develops image-based minimally invasive therapies for the treatment of oncological as well as neuro- and cardiovascular common diseases and pursues a disease-oriented and holistic approach, in which the entire clinical workflow (planning, imaging, patient access, navigation, required instruments, therapy monitoring and control) is considered. The new tailor-made therapy concepts are to be integrated into disease-specific "solutions", which are characterised by the following features:

• patient-friendly
• precise and therapeutically highly effective
• curative, low-radiation/radiation-free, patient-specific
• cost efficient

In the field of oncology, the aim is to design image-guided therapies in a way that they can become part of broad clinical routine. Research in this area is conducted in four guiding and cross-sectional topics, which focus on three major medical technology challenges in cancer of the liver, kidney, spine and lung:

• curative therapy: A0 ablation (removal of the complete tumour with safety margin)
• local and systemic surveillance: monitoring and prognosis of A0 ablation by integrating the cross-sectional topic Immunoprofiling
• development of dedicated interventional imaging systems

In the current second funding phase, only the oncological issues will be financed proportionately from the BMBF programme "Research Campus - Public-Private Partnership for Innovations".

The areas of neuro- and cardiovascular diseases are realised with own funds from the Research Campus partners and transfer central results of the first funding phase into clinical application:

• One-stop shop strategy for stroke treatment
• Rupture prediction of cerebral aneurysms as the main cause of haemorrhagic stroke
• completely radiation-free diagnosis of heart valve diseases, combined with a patient-specific heart valve model as a basis for planning and therapy

Further information on phase 1 of the project, which ran from 01.1.2015-31.12.2019, can be found here.