22.05.2025
Major achievement for inflammation research in Northern Germany: The Cluster of Excellence PMI secures renewed funding
The Cluster of Excellence PMI will be funded for a further seven years and can thus continue its successful research into chronic inflammatory diseases. The Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Lung Center has been a member of this research initiative since the beginning of the first funding phase in 2007 and will be conducting research in the coming years - together with the Universities of Kiel and Lübeck, the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology Plön - to bring precision medicine for chronic inflammatory diseases into clinical application.
- The Cluster of Excellence in the North of Germany focused on inflammation research is receiving funding for the fourth time in a row.
- The vision for the new funding phase is to bring precision medicine for chronic inflammatory diseases into clinical application.
The joint application by Kiel University and the University of Lübeck (UzL) for continued funding of the Schleswig-Holstein-based Cluster of Excellence "Precision Medicine in Chronic Inflammation" (PMI) has been successful: The Joint Science Conference of the Federal and State Governments, together with the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Council of Science and Humanities, announced today that the PMI Cluster will continue to receive funding in the upcoming funding period as part of Germany’s Excellence Strategy. This marks the fourth consecutive time the inflammation-focused Cluster has prevailed in this highly competitive funding program — an exceptionally rare achievement. The requested funding amounts to nearly 70 million euros for the period from January 2026 through the end of 2032.
Aim: To bring the latest findings into clinical application for the benefit of those affected
"Being awarded funding for the fourth time confirms the scientific excellence of our members as well as the success of our interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines and institutions. I am absolutely delighted that we can continue this important work and further advance precision medicine for chronic inflammatory diseases," says Professor Stefan Schreiber, spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence PMI. In the upcoming funding period, which begins in January 2026, PMI will focus on translating research findings into clinical application.
Prof. Stefan Niemann
Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Lung Center
"The focus of the work at the FZB is a better understanding of the mechanisms that lead to the long-term consequences of lung diseases. In the next funding phase, precision medicine approaches for improved prevention and therapy will be developed."
Prof. Petra Bacher
Institute of Immunology, Kiel University and UKSH
"Inflammatory T cells activated by disease-relevant antigens play a key role in the pathophysiology of chronic inflammatory diseases (CIDs). Our vision is to identify these disease-relevant antigens, as well as the mechanisms and functions of pathogenic T cells in CIDs. Based on this understanding, we aim to develop new, targeted immunotherapies for patients with CID."
Prof. Jan Heyckendorf
Head of the Leibniz Lung Clinic (Kiel University/ Research Center Borstel / UKSH), Director of the Clinic for Internal Medicine I, UKSH Campus Kiel.
"We aim to take precision medicine to a new level with the upcoming funding phase. Patients with chronic inflammatory lung diseases, such as COPD, should directly benefit from the scientific advances that come with it."
Prof. Henriette Kirchner
Institute of Human Genetics, University of Lübeck
"I want to better understand the connection between chronic inflammation and metabolic diseases such as obesity and fatty liver in order to improve treatment options. Ideally, in the future, we will be able to use medications developed for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis to treat obesity—and conversely, apply the so-called 'diet injections' to chronic inflammatory skin diseases."
Prof. Philip Rosenstiel
Director of the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology (IKMB) of the UKSH and the CAU
"We will work together to understand which molecular switches are flipped in immune cells that lead to chronic inflammation. Based on this knowledge, we aim to develop new high-resolution diagnostics and innovative treatment approaches."
Prof. Stefan Schreiber, Sprecher des Exzellenzclusters PMI
Spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence PMI
Director of the Department of Internal Medicine I, UKSH, Campus Kiel, and Director of the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology (IKMB) of the UKSH and Kiel University
„We are now opening a new chapter in which we aim to make intestinal inflammations like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis as manageable as diabetes. We plan to achieve this through new diagnostics and personalized therapies that enable better disease control and the restoration of health."
About the Cluster PMI:
e and more people in industrialized countries suffer from chronic inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis. In the Cluster of Excellence PMI, researchers from various medical and basic science disciplines work together interdisciplinarily to significantly improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of these diseases.
Chronic inflammatory diseases vary from person to person in their progression and severity. While symptoms can often be alleviated and disease progression slowed, a complete halt of the disease is only achieved in some cases. The members of the Cluster of Excellence aim to address this challenge through precision medicine—diagnostics and therapies tailored specifically to the individual affected. This approach involves recognizing and utilizing the individual differences between patients with the same disease to select the most suitable treatment.
The now approved application is a continuation of the currently running PMI cluster. The first funding phase, from 2019 to 2025, was supported with a total of 52.2 million euros through the Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments. This work builds on the predecessor cluster “Inflammation at Interfaces,” which was funded in two phases from 2007 to 2018. The Excellence Strategy is a funding program by the federal and state governments aimed at sustainably strengthening top-level research and the international competitiveness of German universities.
The institutions involved in the PMI Cluster are: the Universities of Kiel and Lübeck, the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), the Borstel Research Center, Leibniz Lung Center, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design Kiel, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, and the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Kiel.
Contact
Britta Weller