Faculty of Medicine

Externally Funded Projects

Researchers at the Faculty of Medicine conduct excellent research and are very successful in acquiring competitively awarded external funding. National and international funding bodies only support the best project proposals, which is why we are proud that we raised over CHF 90 million in third-party funding in 2022. Below you will find an overview of the current externally funded projects.

EU Flag

Funded by the European Union

Through its Framework Programmes, the EU promotes research and innovation. Different funding schemes are available.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

SHOXY – Tracing novel androgen pathways: deciphering the role of 16α-hydroxylation in human fetal biology
PI: Michael Grössl (Department of Nephrology and Hypertension)
Duration: 01.09.2021 – 31.08.2023

nAChRs-CRC-PCa-IF-RI – Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors nAChRs in Prostate and Colon Cell Cancer: pharmacology, mechanism, cellular (mal)function
PI: Christine Peinelt (Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine)
Duration: 01.04.2022 – 31.03.2024

Disc4All – Training network to advance integrated computational simulations in translational medicine, applied to intervertebral disc degeneration
Co-PI: Benjamin Gantenbein (Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology)
Duration: 01.11.2020 – 31.10.2024

SAND – Secretion, Autophagy and their role in Neurodegeneration
Co-PI: Smita Saxena (Department of Neurology)
Duration: 01.11.2019 – 31.10.2024

Bio2Brain – Nose-to-Brain Delivery of Biopharmaceutics for the therapy of central nervous system diseases: A design-based approach for efficient drug delivery systems
Co-PI: Andrew Chan (Department of Neurology)
Duration: 01.01.2021 – 31.12.2024

OBERON – Opto-Biomechanical Eye Research Network
Co-PI: Sabine Kling (ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research)
Duration: 01.01.2021 – 31.12.2024

OncoProTools – Protease-guided tumor targeting tools to revolutionize cancer diagnosis and treatment
Partner: Axel Romiger (Departement of Nuclear Medicine)
Duration: 01.09.2022 – 31.08.2026

Tools4Teams – Research Training to Design and Implement Tools Supporting Safe Teamwork in Healthcare
Partner: Guido Beldi (Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine)
Duration: 01.03.2023 – 28.02.2027

Regenerate-IT – Learning from animals how to regenerate: multidisciplinary training programme in regenerative biology
Partner: Nadia Mercader (Institute of Anatomy)
Duration: 01.03.2023 – 28.02.2027

ERC Advanced Grants

HHMM-Neonates – Development of Healthy Host Microbial Mutualism in Early Life
PI: Andrew Macpherson (Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine)
Duration: 01.09.2017 - 31.08.2023

ERC Consolidator Grants

TransReg - Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of cardiac regenerative capacity in the zebrafish
PI: Nadia Mercader (Institute of Anatomy)
Duration: 01.08.2019 – 31.07.2024

ERC Starting Grants

WePredict – Microbiota and immune responses at weaning predict the susceptibility to chronic inflammatory diseases in adulthood
PI: Ziad Al Nabhani (Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine)
Duration: 01.09.2021 - 31.08.2026

Future and Emerging Technologies

HBP SGA3 – Human Brain Project Specific Grant Agreement 3
Co-PI: Walter Senn (Department of Physiology)
Duration: 01.04.2020 – 30.09.2023

DIGIPREDICT – Edge AI-deployed DIGItal Twins for PREDICTing disease progression and need for early intervention in infectious and cardiovascular diseases beyond COVID-19
Co-PI: Wolf Hautz (Department of Emergency Medicine)
Duration: 01.01.2021 – 31.12.2024

Cluster 1: Health

IntelliLung – Intelligent Lung Support for Mechanically Ventilated Patients in the Intensive Care Unit
Partner: Martin Faltys (Department of Intensive Care Medicine)
Duration: 01.09.2022 – 31.08.2027

ESCAPE – Efficient and rapidly SCAlable EU-wide evidence-driven Pandemic response plans through dynamic Epidemic data assimilation
Partner: Nicola Low (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.01.2023 – 31.12.2026

MELISSA – Mobile Artificial Intelligence Solution for Diabetes Adaptive Care
Partner: Stavroula Mougiakakou (ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research)
Duration: 01.06.2022 – 31.05.2026

BE-SAFE – Implementing a patient-centred and evidence-based intervention to reduce BEnzodiazepine and sedative-hypnotic use to improve patient SAFEty and quality of care
Partner: Nicolas Rodondi (Institute of Primary Health Care)
Duration: 01.09.2022 – 31.08.2027

Cluster 4: Digital, Industry and Space

GEYEDANCE – AI guidance for robot-assisted eye surgery
Partner: Raphael Sznitman (ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research)
Duration: 01.09.2022 – 31.08.2025

Health, demographic change and well-being

LITMUS – Liver Investigation: Testing Marker Utility in Steatohepatitis
Co-PI: Jean-François Dufour (Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine)
Duration: 01.11.2017 – 31.10.2023

iLIVE – Living well, dying well. A research programme to support living until the end
Co-PI: Steffen Eychmüller (Department of Radiation Oncology)
Duration: 01.01.2019 – 31.12.2023

VACCELERATE – European Corona Vaccine Trial Accelerator Platform
Co-PI: Sven Trelle (Clinical Trial Unit Bern)
Duration: 28.01.2021 – 27.01.2024

TransBioLine – Translational Safety Biomarker Pipeline (TransBioLine): Enabling development and implementation of novel safety biomarkers in clinical trials and diagnosis of disease
Co-PI: Guido Stirnimann (Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine)
Duration: 01.02.2019 – 31.01.2024

CORE-MD – Coordinating Research and Evidence for Medical Devices
Co-PI: Stephan Windecker (Department of Cardiology)
Duration: 01.04.2021 – 31.03.2024

ConcePTION – Building an ecosystem for better monitoring and communicating of medication safety in pregnancy and breastfeeding: validated and regulatory endorsed workflows for fast, optimised evidence generation
Co-PI: Alice Panchaud (Institute of Primary Health Care)
Duration: 01.04.2019 – 31.03.2024

iPSpine – Induced pluripotent stem cell-based therapy for spinal regeneration
Co-PI: Benjamin Gantenbein (ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research)
Duration: 01.01.2019 – 30.06.2024

HTx – Next Generation Health Technology Assessment to support patient-centred, societally oriented, real-time decision-making on access and reimbursement for health technologies throughout Europe
Co-PI: Georgia Salanti (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.01.2019 – 30.06.2024

REANIMA – New-generation cardiac therapeutic strategies directed to the activation of endogenous regenerative mechanisms
Co-PI: Nadia Mercader Huber (Institute of Anatomy)
Duration: 01.01.2020 – 30.06.2025

DIAMONDS – Diagnosis and Management of Febrile Illness using RNA Personalised Molecular Signature Diagnosis
Co-PI: Philip Agyemann (Department of Pediatrics)
Duration: 01.01.2020 – 30.06.2025

STOPSTORM – A Prospective European Validation Cohort for Stereotactic Therapy of Re-Entrant Tachycardia
Co-PI: Olgun Eliçin (Department of Radiation Oncology)
Duration: 01.05.2021 – 30.04.2027

Secure societies - Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens

MED1stMR – Medical First Responder Training using a Mixed Reality Approach featuring haptic feedback for enhanced realism
Co-PI: Thomas Sauter (Department of Emergency Medicine)
Duration: 01.06.2021 – 31.05.2024

RadoNorm – Towards effective radiation protection based on improved scientific evidence and social considerations - focus on radon and NORM
Co-PI: Ben Spycher (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.09.2020 – 31.08.2025

Flagge USA

Funded by the National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It is the largest biomedical research funding agency in the world.

IeDEA-SA – International Epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS Southern Africa
Co-PI: Matthias Egger (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.07.2006 - 30.04.2026

DTG-RESIST – HIV-1 subtype, specific drug resistance in patients failing Dolutegravir-based 1st, 2nd or 3rd line regimens: the International epidemiological Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA)
PI: Matthias Egger (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.09.2021 - 31.08.2024

 

Prostate SPOREs – Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) SPORE in Prostate Cancer
Co-PI: Mark Rubin (Department for BioMedical Research)

An examination of psychomotor disturbance in current and remitted MDD: An RDoC Study
Co-PI: Sebastian Walther (University Hospital for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy)
Duration: 08.04.2019 - 31.03.2024

SHAPE – Noninvasive Subharmonic Aided Pressure Estimation of Portal Hypertension
PI: Annalisa Berzigotti (Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine)
Duration: 01.04.2013 - 30.04.2026

LQTS-PUFA – Polyunsaturated fatty acids as anti-arrhythmic agents
PI: Katja Odening (Department of Cardiology)
Duration: 10.01.2022 - 31.03.2025

ENIGMA Parkinson's Initiative: A Global Initiative for Parkinson's Disease
PI: Roland Wiest (University Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology)
Duration: 01.09.2021 - 31.08.2026

The Role of CRIPTO Signaling in Lethal Prostate Cancer
PI: Marianna Kruithof-de Julio (Department of Urology)

In Vivo and Ex Vivo Models to Study Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury, Endothelial Cell Protection, and Limb Preservation in a Prolonged Field Care Scenario
PI: Robert Rieben (Department for BioMedical Research)

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) funds research in all scientific disciplines under a mandate from the Swiss Federal Government.

From the nose to the lungs: the importance of upper respiratory disease in Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia
PI: Myrofora Goutaki (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.10.2019 - 30.09.2023

Mapping and Modeling of Deep Brain Stimulation
PI: Thuy Anh Khoa Nguyen (Department of Neurosurgery)
Duration: 01.12.2019 - 30.11.2023

Evolutionary dynamics of bacteria in the intestines of IBD patients
PI: Bahtiyar Yilmaz (Department for BioMedical Researc)
Duration: 01.09.2020 - 31.08.2024

ToolCAP: Novel tools to improve primary-care management of pediatric community-acquired pneumonia - an impact-based diagnostic study in Tanzania
PI: Kristina Keitel (Department of Paediatrics)
Duration: 01.07.2021 - 30.06.2025

Pathways from mental disorders to burden of disease: Causal mediation analysis of big data from South Africa
PI: Andreas Haas (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.07.2021 - 30.06.2025

Adaptive neuromodulation in movement disorders - a precision medicine approach
PI: Gerd Tinkhauser (Department of Neurology)
Duration: 01.01.2022 - 31.12.2025

Impacts of an INtervention TO increase MOBility in older hospitalised medical patients (INTOMOB): a cluster randomised controlled trial
PI: Carole Elodie Aubert (Department of General Internal Medicine)
Duration: 01.02.2022 - 31.01.2026

DEciphering the Enigma of Postprandial Hyperinsulinaemic Hypoglycaemia after Bariatric Surgery (The DEEP Project)
PI: Lia Bally (Department of Diabetology, Endocrinology, Nutritional Medicine and Metabolism)
Duration: 01.01.2020- 31.12.2024

Regulatory dynamics of heart formation and in vivo cardiac reprogramming
PI: Marco Osterwalder (Department for BioMedical Research)
Duration: 01.05.2020- 30.04.2025

LMol: Biomolecular language models for protein design
PI: Thomas Lemmin (Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine)
Duration: 01.09.2021 – 31.08.2026

The risks and benefits of integrating emotions in end of life communication
PI: Sofia Carolina Zambrano Ramos (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.11.2021 - 31.10.2026

Quantitative magnetic resonance biopsies: Exploiting signal asymmetries for next-generation noninvasive biomarker mapping
PI: Josefina Bastiaansen (Department of Diagnostic, Interventional and Pediatric Radiology)
Duration: 01.11.2021 - 31.10.2026

Immunometabolic sensing of bacterial metabolites driving diet-induced obesity
PI: Maria Luisa Balmer (Department of Diabetology, Endocrinology, Nutritional Medicine and Metabolism)
Duration: 01.11.2021 - 31.10.2026

Disease-targeted next-generation sequencing panel (VASCSequ) for detection of somatic-mosaic mutations in congenital vascular malformations to enable further advances in personalized therapeutic decision making
PI: Iris Baumgartner (Department of Angiology)
Duration: 01.01.2021 - 31.12.2024

Unravel Principles Of Self-Organization In Injured Tissue
PI: Eliane J. Müller (Department for BioMedical Research)
Duration: 31.06.2021 - 31.05.2024

Trans-omic approach to colorectal cancer: an integrative computational and clinical perspective
PI: Inti Zlobec (Institute of Tissue Medicine and Pathology)
Duration: 01.10.2020 - 30.09.2024

Xeno2Cure - advanced engineering and testing of organ donor pigs
PI: Robert Rieben (Department for BioMedical Research)
Duration: 01.04.2021 - 31.03.2025

PROMETEX: Metabolically-instructed personalized therapy selection for prostate cancer
PI: Marianna Kruithof-de Julio (Department for BioMedical Research)
Duration: 01.11.2021 - 31.10.2025

HORAO - Polarimetric visualization of Healthy brain fiber tracts for tumor delineation during neurosurgery
PI: Philippe Schucht (Department of Neurosurgery)
Duration: 01.04.2022 - 31.03.2026

Dynamic consortium interactions that establish the microbiota during weaning
PI: Andrew Macpherson (University of Bern)
Duration: 01.05.2022 - 30.04.2026

Exploring the Cellular Impact of Neural Oscillations
PI: Antoine Adamantidis (Department of Neurology)
Duration: 01.01.2023 - 31.12.2026

Modulation of Agency in Functional Neurological Disorders
PI: Selma Aybek Rusca (Department of Neurology)
Duration: 01.11.2022 – 31.10.2023

Encoding of anxiety and fear in the ventral CA1 hippocampus
PI: Stephane Ciocchi (Department of Physiology)
Duration: 01.03.2022 – 29.02.2024

Functional cure of hepatitis B in Switzerland and sub-Saharan Africa: determinants and long-term impact on clinical outcomes
PI: Gilles Olivier Wandeler (Department of Infectious Diseases)
Duration: 01.09.2022 – 31.08.2024

Coordination of host-microbe interactions by crosstalk with anti-glycan antibodies in inflammatory bowel diseases
PI: Bahtiyar Yilmaz (Department for BioMedical Research)
Duration: 01.01.2023 - 31.12.2027

The emergence of self-harm in the first decades of life: a biopsychosocial perspective on developmental dynamics, risk and protective factors
PI: Annekatrin Steinhoff (University Hospital for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy)
Duration: 01.02.2023 - 31.01.2028

Advancing researCh on exTreme hUmid heAt and heaLth - ACTUAL
PI: Ana Maria Vicedo Cabrera (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)
Duration: 01.06.2023 - 31.05.2028

 

NRP 79 - Advancing 3R - Animals, Research and Society

HeartX – Decoding cardiac regulatory landscapes in an all-human model for cardiogenesis
Co-PI: Marco Osterwalder (Department for BioMedical Research)
Duration: 01.10.2022 – 30.09.2025

Using Zophobas morio larvae to design a new in vivo model of intestinal colonization due to multidrug-resistant Enterobacterales
Co-PI: Andrea Endimiani (Institute for Infectious Diseases)
Duration: 01.09.2022 – 31.08.2025

NRP 77 - Digital Transformation

The digital diagnostician: how information technology affects medical diagnoses
Co-PI: Wolf Hautz (Department of Emergency Medicine)
Duration: 01.04.2020 – 30.09.2023

Schweizer Flagge

Funded by the Swiss Personalized Health Network

The Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) is a national initiative under the leadership of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS).

Harmonising the collection of health-related data and biospecimens in paediatric hospitals throughout Switzerland.
PI: Claudia Kuehni (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine)

Swiss BioRef: Personalized reference values for precision medicine.
PI: Alexander Leichtle (Multidisciplinary Center for Infectious Diseases)

Swiss Molecular Pathology Breakthrough Platform (SOCIBP).
Co-PI: Mark Rubin (Department for BioMedical Research)