In April 2022, we applied for a University Research and Treatment Centre (URTC) ‘Reproductive Health’– composed of about 50 local basic and clinical scientists from the Medical Faculty, the University Hospital, and the Max Planck Institute as well as one collaborator from the RWTH Aachen. The spokespersons team, PD Nina Neuhaus, Prof. Timo Strünker (Centre of Reproductive Medicine and Andrology), and Prof. Frank Tüttelmann (Institute of Reproductive Genetics) now happily announce that after competitive review, the Medical Faculty has granted to establish the URTC ‘Reproductive Health’, serving as the intramural umbrella for collaborative reproductive research. Implementing the Medical Faculty’s claim for translation, the URTC defines its mission as spurring the translation of basic knowledge into the clinic to enable early diagnosis of infertility and evidence-based treatment decisions and, thereby, improve patient care. In other words: The research and treatment centre is dedicated to its leitmotif “From bench to bedside and back”.

Over the course of two years minimum, the URTC sets out to elucidate the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms governing the formation and function of the testis, production and function of sperm, fertilisation process, embryonic development, implantation, and pregnancy – both in health and disease. The URTC shall also address oncological topics that are interlinked on the level of gonadal tumours, the growing intersection of infertility- and onco-genes, and oncological treatments that require measures for fertility preservation. To this end, we combine interdisciplinary research in molecular and cell biology, physiology, epi/genetics, (bio)informatics, and multimodal data analysis. For more information, please click here.