Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich

The Ludwig-Maximilians-University MunichLMU) is the leading teaching and research university in Germany, ranking 1st in Germany in the latest Times Higher Education World University Ranking. With the neighboring Max-Planck, Helmholtz, and Technical University institutions, it can be regarded as a major European science hub. LMU is a large beneficiary of the German excellence initiative, and has hosted more than 40 ERC grants. In total, under the Seventh EU Framework Programme the LMU was recipient of 225 projects, in 22 of which it is/was the coordinating institution. In the first Health call in Horizon2020 the LMU received 7 grants. The Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research (ISD) was launched in 2010 as a new clinical research institute integrating basic research, patient-oriented research, and patient care. It is part of the LMU Medical Center (Klinikum der Universität München, KUM), and financed by a private foundation.

Role in CoSTREAM

The Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munichwill lead Work Package 1 on Genetics and contributes to Work Package 2 on Metabolomics, Work Package 3 on Brain Imaging and Work Package 6 on Therapeutics.

In Work Package 1, the genetic overlap between stroke and Alzheimer’s disease will be studied, both on a more global and a detailed, variant-specific level. The results of this Work Package will directly influence Work Packages 2, 3 and 6, as specific genes/variants and polygenic risk score will be carried over as input to the other WPs.

Key staff

Prof. Martin Dichgans is Professor of Neurology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, endowed chair for Translational Stroke and Dementia Research; Director of the Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research (LMU KUM); Head of the interdisciplinary Stroke Center Munich (LMU); Executive committee member of the European Stroke Organisation (ESO); Board of directors of the German Stroke Society (DSG); major field of research: SVDs, stroke and dementia; specific expertise in: genetics, molecular biology, and imaging.

He has extensive experience in international and national collaborative projects. He is a founding member of the International Stroke Genetics Consortium, past chair of the METASTROKE consortium holding genome-wide data on more than 12,000 individuals with ischemic stroke, and currently coordinates the meta-analysis on 1000G imputed data. The group oversees one of the largest cohorts of patients with CADASIL (N>300) as well as sporadic SVDs (N>400), and one of the largest (N>3,000) collections of biosamples from patients with ischemic stroke. MD is a board member of the DFG-funded Cluster of Excellence ‘Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (SyNergy)’ and Graduate School of Neuroscience.

Rainer Malik, PhD is a research associate at the Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University München. His major research interests are genetics of complex diseases with a focus on cardiovascular diseases, especially ischemic stroke and migraine. The focus lies on transition of genetic findings to molecular biology and –omics techniques. Rainer Malik has co-authored more than 50 research articles.