The Health Research Area at a Glance

The Health research area of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe is dealt with by eight institutes and
makes up a share of about 15% in our scope of competence. It covers the scientific programs of:

Biomedical Research

Regenerative Medicine

Biomedical Research Program

Under the Biomedical Research Program, the Institute of Toxicology and Genetics studies the
reactions of organisms and their cells to environmental impacts (radiation, chemical carcinogens,
teratogens) and compare them with the reactions to endogenous substances (hormones, growth
factors). These activities are aimed at learning to understand the mechanisms developed by organisms
and their cells to either repair or tolerate the damage induced in the genetic substance, which processes
contribute to the cancerous transformation of cells, and which factors are responsible for a locally
growing tumor cell becoming a metastasizing tumor cell. As cancer formation can only be understood
when understanding normal development, matters of embryogenesis are studied by several working
groups using animal models.

The entire spectrum of technologies existing in molecular biology today is applied: Isolation and
characterization of genes; overexpression and suppression of authentic and modified genes in cells and
organisms; determination of the transcription activity of genes, the mRNA volume, the protein mass, and
the protein activity; characterization of protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions in the living cell and
in cell extracts. Most issues are studied using cell cultures.

Regenerative Medicine Program

The continuously increasing life expectancy of our society, and the raise of geriatric disorders more
frequently lead to functional constraints of the organism. In addition also more and more younger people
become dependent on organ assist measures due to accidents or diseases. This general development
results in an increasing demand for organ assist systems, organ replacement and so called regenerative
techniques, which our Program intends to comply with.

One objective of our Program is the engineering of tissues and organs. This requires at first the
development of optimal substrates (e.g. scaffolds and membranes) based on functional polymer
systems with tailored properties and bio-functionality. A significant functionality thereby is the control of
the required cell division and differentiation. In parallel we develop bioreactors which are able to
preserve the function and vitality of the respective cell aggregates for a longer period of time. After all
we intend an up-scaling of these reactors for a complete replacement of the desired organ function.
Stem cell technologies are a special issue to be considered in this context.

A further aim of our program is the improvement of neural coupling of man-made devices onto the
organism. We intend to develop a “nerve plug” which would enable us to extract signals directly out of
the nerve tract in order to use it for control purposes. This will be demonstrated exemplarily with our
intelligent forearm prosthesis which we developed to date such that it already is able to carry out five
different grip patterns..