Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit
The Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit is an alliance between the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and the Medical Faculties of the University of Heidelberg. Its primary aim is to uncover the molecular basis of disease and to speed the transformation of biomedical discoveries into personalized medicine strategies.
Founded in 2002, the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit comprises nine inter-disciplinary research teams. It is co-directed by Prof. Carsten Müller-Tidow from the Department of Internal Medicine V Hematology, Oncology and Rheumatology at the University of Heidelberg and Dr. Wolfgang Huber (scientist) from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and is housed in the Otto-Meyerhof-Research Center on the Medical Campus of the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Research themes
Research themes place emphasis on common diseases as well as on rare diseases with a particular medical need.In 2025 more than 120 international scientists work on the following nine research themes:
- ‘Chronic Pain and Homeostasis’ headed by Rohini Kuner, Robert Prevedel and Jan Siemens.
- ‘ECM Brain’ headed by Alba Diz-Muñoz and Michael Platten
- ‘Heart Development and Diseases’ headed by Eileen Furlong and Johannes Backs.
- ‘Iron homeostasis in health and disease’ headed by Martina Muckenthaler and Matthias Hentze.
- ‘Microbiota Drug Metabolism and Cancer Therapy’ headed by Matthias Ebert, Tianzuo Zhan and Michael Zimmermann.
- ‘Molecular Pediatric Oncology’ headed by Jan Korbel and Andreas Kulozik.
- ‘Stem Cell–Niche Networks in Ageing and Disease’ headed by Caroline Pabst, Judith Zaugg and Carsten Müller–Tidow.
- ‘Systems Medicine of Cancer Therapies’ headed by Sascha Dietrich, Wolfgang Huber (scientist) and Junyan Lu.
- ‘Translational RNA Biology’ headed by Andreas Kulozik and Matthias Hentze.