Why metabolism research matters? Altered metabolism is a central denominator of several disease processes with implications for virtually any discipline in medicine.
The high potential of metabolism research is reflected by the wide and diverse spectrum of research topics ranging from rare inborn errors of metabolism to common conditions such as obesity, diabetes, steatotic liver, as well as malnutrition. Further exciting aspects include changes in microbial metabolism due to dysbiosis, oncometabolism of tumors and cachexia, immunometabolism as key a regulator of immune functions, neuroscience linking central regulation of food intake, behavior and mental health to metabolism.
All these areas highlight how interorgan metabolic crosstalk transcends traditional boundaries between medical disciplines with important repercussions on disease prevention and public health. We believe that many research areas at MedUniWien have undeveloped potential in this field and this platform represents an opportunity to connect with your colleagues and explore those connections.
Metabolic research is already at the center of several research consortia of the MedUniWien including the Custers of Excellence on metabolic control of aging (MetAge) and neuroscience (Excellent Brains), Special Research Areas (SFBs) on immunometabolism and lipid hydrolysis, as well as several other EU, WWTF and FWF-funded projects. Apart from promoting collaborations in metabolism research at the MedUniWien we want to promote the formation of a new research network, which will be able to attract competitive funding on multidisciplinary aspects of metabolism research.
By connecting the different research activities in metabolism at our university we will address the need to integrate metabolism into a multidimensional network of – omics, also including translational and investigator-driven studies. The platform is supported by dedicated research infrastructure, including a newly established metabolomics core facility and the functional imaging center (PET/MRI). Both units offer advanced analytical capabilities and in-depth expertise, actively contributing to the generation and interpretation of metabolic data. Through close collaboration, they help enable high-quality, multidisciplinary research in metabolism across diverse biological systems and scales. Additionally, the Metabolism platform will also crosslink with other research cluster and platforms of the MedUniWien such as the Research Platform Medical Imaging (RPMI).The expanding activities in artificial intelligence at our university will help to integrate the vast amount of multi-omic and multi-organ data emerging from our metabolic research.
We plan to hold bimonthly research meetings and annual retreats with high level external speakers complementing research presentations of ongoing internal projects.
Moreover, we want to provide small collaborative seed grants, assets for analytical and imaging core facilities and congress travel support for young early-stage investigators as part of our core mission to inspire the next generation of scientists in metabolic research.