The German Diabetes Center (DDZ) opened its new Competence Center for Innovative Diabetes Therapy (KomIT) with eight partners in an official opening event. The consortium of industry and university research aims to promote the development of new therapies for diabetes. The goal of the center, which is coordinated by the DDZ, is to efficiently translate innovative research results into clinical applications to improve diabetes management in patients. The project will be funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the EU in the amount of around 3.5 million over the next three years.
Düsseldorf (DDZ) – The central principle of the new KomIT is to build a sustainable infrastructure that bundles expertise from management, development and medicinal chemistry, preclinical, analytical, toxicology and physiology up to clinical trials and provides an open platform for NRW, Germany and Europe. “We want to bundle our skills through the joint activities, i.e. accelerate translation so that those affected can benefit more quickly from new findings from basic research, ” emphasized Prof. Michael Roden, executive member of the German Diabetes Center and coordinator of the new Competence Center for Innovative Diabetes Therapy (KomIT) at the opening ceremony.
The steadily increasing number of diabetes patients in Germany causes socio-economic burdens on the health system. Christoph Dammermann, State Secretary in the Ministry of Economy, Innovation, Digitization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia: “The Competence Center for Innovative Diabetes Therapy creates a previously unique research infrastructure that combines innovative and digital approaches to comprehensive diabetes therapy. The center sustainably shapes our health system and strengthens North Rhine-Westphalia as a business and innovation location. ”The Deputy for Health of the state capital Düsseldorf, Prof. Dr. Andreas Meyer-Falcke, in his greeting, put the people concerned in the center. For them, it is important to benefit from new research results as quickly as possible in order to maintain quality of life or to create new ones. In addition to the German Diabetes Center (DDZ), the KomIT involved Algiax Pharmaceuticals GmbH, Taros Chemicals GmbH & Co.KG, Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC), vivo Science GmbH, A&M Laboratory for Analytics and Metabolism Research Service GmbH, PROFIL Institute for Metabolism Research GmbH and the TU Dortmund with the Drug Discovery Hub Dortmund (DDHD).
Excellent basic research with clinical-experimental diabetes studies has been carried out in North Rhine-Westphalia for a long time. However, the current translation of these results into clinical application is not yet sufficient to set sustainable economic impulses. Start-ups and small companies with high innovation potential are often unable to carry out complex experimental and clinical research with critical mass and the necessary speed. This is where the new interdisciplinary center of excellence for innovative diabetes therapy (KomIT) comes in. This innovative research infrastructure will provide important impulses for the pharmaceutical and biotech sector in North Rhine-Westphalia and will also sustainably strengthen the innovative strength and competitiveness of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The project is funded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the European Union as part of the program EFRE.NRW – Investments in growth and employment in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.