The Rudolf Virchow Center (''RVZ'') is the DFG Research Center for Integrative and Translational Bioimaging of the

University of Würzburg The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (also referred to as the University of Würzburg, in German ''Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg'') is a public research university in Würzburg, Germany. The University of Würzburg is one of ...

. It was started in 2001 as one of three German ''Centers of Excellence'' funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG. Its founding chairman is

Martin J. Lohse Martin J. Lohse (born 26 August 1956) is a German physician and pharmacologist. Career Lohse performs ongoing research on G protein-coupled receptors. Since 1993, he is a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Würzburg, Germany, and he was ...

, a former coworker of Robert Lefkowitz at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

Research

The center derives its name from the pathologist Rudolf Virchow, who was a professor in Würzburg from 1849 to 1856 and was the first to postulate that diseases originated in dysfunctions of cells. Researchers at the Rudolf Virchow Center aim to trace diseases back to dysfunctions of proteins. These are called target proteins because they may serve as targets for diagnostic tools or for therapeutic drugs. Research is organized in four fields: (1) Protein structure and function
(2) Proteins in

cellular signaling In biology, cell signaling (cell signalling in British English) or cell communication is the ability of a cell to receive, process, and transmit signals with its environment and with itself. Cell signaling is a fundamental property of all cellula ...

(3)

Nucleic acid Nucleic acids are biopolymers, macromolecules, essential to all known forms of life. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomers made of three components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main cl ...

-binding proteins
(4) Proteins in cell-cell interactions. The Rudolf Virchow Center also organizes a graduate program and several undergraduate programs in biomedicine and experimental medicine,. Its Public Science Center offers courses for children and high school students and public events.

References

{{authority control Medical research institutes in Germany Rudolf Virchow Medical and health organisations based in Bavaria