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Personalized Health: National Funding for Basel-led Research Groups
Nine research projects involving Basel-based researchers in the field of personalized health are to receive funding from the Swiss government: support will be given to researchers from the University of Basel, University Hospital Basel, University Children’s Hospital Basel, and ETH Zurich’s Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, which is based in Basel. The projects will be funded within the context of the national “Swiss Personalized Health Network” initiative and the ETH strategic focus area “Personalized Health and Related Technologies”, and will receive more than CHF 14 million over the next three years.
06 December 2017
The funded research projects encompass various areas of disease, such as severe bacterial infections, cancer, physical frailty, immunotherapy, and neuroscience. In addition, they seek to bolster the accessibility and management of medical data for research projects, as well as to improve the availability of data relating to personalized health in children and young patients. The University of Basel and the two university hospitals are also providing their own additional funding of more than CHF 2.5 million.
Five Basel-led projects
Five of the supported projects are coordinated by researchers from the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel. The “Personalized Swiss Sepsis Study” (PD Dr. Adrian Egli) aims to predict the emergence and individual development of blood poisoning earlier and more accurately than before and therefore to allow more effective treatment. The project “Multidisciplinary Multicentre Molecular and Cellular Cancer Consortium” (Professor Mohamed Bentires-Alj) helps to deliver personalized diagnosis and treatment to patients with advanced-stage cancer.
Three further projects from the Department of Clinical Research seek to clarify the way in which patient data is managed for research purposes (Dr. Jörg Willers), to create an electronic declaration of consent for patients (Professor Christiane Pauli-Magnus), and to process medical reports using artificial intelligence-based methods (Dr. Thomas Fabbro).
The other four projects involve Basel-based research groups, including the Transfaculty Research Platform Molecular and Cognitive Neurosciences, in the capacity of contributors.
The supported research projects were largely designed within the context of the alliance between Basel and Zurich. Most projects also incorporate research groups from other university hospitals and seek to identify Switzerland-wide solutions to the challenges of personalized medicine. At the University of Basel site, the activities relating to personalized medicine are coordinated by Personalized Health Basel, a joint project organization of the University of Basel, University Hospital Basel, and University Children’s Hospital Basel.
For the most effective therapy
Personalized Health aims to provide targeted prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases using the most effective therapy in each case and with the least possible side effects for each individual patient. It is based on a detailed scientific understanding of a patient’s personal health, genetics, and disease progression.
Further information
Prof. Dr. Radek Skoda, University of Basel, Department of Biomedicine / University Hospital Basel, phone: +41 61 265 23 24, E-Mail: radek.skoda@unibas.ch
