Description of organisation
The Medical University of Graz (MUG) is associated with the University Clinics of Graz, with 1600 beds and 78000 patients/ year. This facilitates close integration of research and routine clinical services. An important asset of the MUG established in an integrated setting of clinical routine and latest medical research is its ISO- certified biobank core-facility, hosting 3.1 million formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) and more than 120,000 cryopreserved tissue samples and 350,000 serum samples from in total 1.2 mio patients, which according to the BBMRI questionnaire is the largest collection in Europe. The resources are complemented by latest morphological technologies (Laser capture microdissection, LSM, electron microscopy), SPF facility for animal experiments (tumor xenografts and transgenic models) and ISO-certified RNA and DNA analysis (real-time PCR, DNA microarrays, 454-sequencing) as well as proteomics and metabolomics (lipidomics) platforms. All these research resources of the Medical University of Graz are centralized in the Organisational Unit for
Research Infrastructure and operated by first class permanent core facility staff comprising of experienced scientists and skilled technicians.
Profile of staff members
Kurt Zatloukal is Professor of Pathology at the Medical University of Graz with specialisation in molecular pathology, focusing on metabolic and neoplastic diseases, mainly of the liver. He was a member of the Bioethics Commission at the Austrian Federal Chancellery and is the Austrian representative in the OECD task force on biological resource centres and the Roadmap Working Group of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure. Currently he coordinates the preparatory phase of BBMRI and leads the work on pre-analytical standards for tissue banking in the FP7 large integrated project SPIDIA. Additionally, he acts as member of the executive steering committee of the P3G consortium and chairs the governance council of the BioShare project. In context of the Austrian Genome Programme (GEN-AU), he coordinates a Biobank project which is based on a comprehensive collection of diseased and healthy tissues representing a non- selected central European population. Heimo Müller studied mathematics in Graz and Vienna. He started his scientific career in the field of computer graphics and multimedia at Joanneum, worked as Marie Curie fellow at the Faculty of Arts of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and was the founding head of the Information-Design programme at the FH Joanneum in Graz. Within the preparatory phase of BBMRI Heimo Müller presently investigates large inhomogeneous clinical data collections.
Webpage
Recent publications relevant to the project
Min L, Ji Y, Bakiri L, Qiu Z, Cen J, Chen X, Chen L, Scheuch H, Zheng H, QinL, Zatloukal K, Hui L, Wagner EF. Liver cancer initiation is controlled by AP-1through SIRT6-dependent inhibition of survivin. Nat Cell Biol. 2012 Oct 7. doi:10.1038/ncb2590.
Jozefczuk J, Kashofer K, Ummanni R, Henjes F, Rehman S, Geenen S, Wruck W,Regenbrecht C, Daskalaki A, Wierling C, Turano P, Bertini I, Korf U, Zatloukal K,Westerhoff HV, Lehrach H, Adjaye J. A Systems Biology Approach to Deciphering the Etiology of Steatosis Employing Patient-Derived Dermal Fibroblasts and iPS Cells.Front Physiol. 2012;3:339.
Eder J, Gottweis H, Zatloukal K. IT solutions for privacy protection inbiobanking. Public Health Genomics. 2012;15(5):254-62.
Wichmann HE, Kuhn KA, Waldenberger M, Schmelcher D, Schuffenhauer S, MeitingerT, Wurst SH, Lamla G, Fortier I, Burton PR, Peltonen L, Perola M, Metspalu A,Riegman P, Landegren U, Taussig MJ, Litton JE, Fransson MN, Eder J,Cambon-Thomsen A, Bovenberg J, Dagher G, van Ommen GJ, Griffith M, Yuille M,Zatloukal K. Comprehensive catalog of European biobanks. Nat Biotechnol. 2011 Sep 8;29(9):795-7.
Yuille M, van Ommen GJ, Bréchot C, Cambon-Thomsen A, Dagher G, Landegren U, Litton JE, Pasterk M, Peltonen L, Taussig M, Wichmann HE, Zatloukal K. Biobanking for Europe. Brief Bioinform. 2008 Jan;9(1):14-24.
