IRTG/Grad. School

Concept

A major goal of the CRC “Adenine Nucleotides in Immunity and Inflammation” is to foster the careers of excellent young clinical and basic scientists. Scientifically, we do not only aim to inspire our students and young researchers for adenine nucleotide (AN) biology and pathophysiology, but we wish to sustainably educate them in the scientific areas of cell-cell communication and cellular signaling with a special emphasis on inflammation. We therefore have established an Integrated Research Training Group (IRTG) entitled “Modulating inflammation and immunity via regulatory adenine nucleotides”. The IRTG supports the PhD students who are employed within the various CRC projects. For MD students, the IRTG provides a MD thesis program, in which students are trained in basic research. The IRTG provides stipends and funding for eight medical students each year.

The joint program for MD and PhD students ensures a multi-facetted and broad training. Besides general courses, e.g. presentation of scientific results, one aspect of our IRTG are seminars given by PIs from the CRC including both advanced methods for studying AN biology and novel scientific findings. The interdisciplinarity of our CRC allows MD students and PhD students to dive into AN biology from completely different angles, e.g. from the cell biologist's, the chemist's, or the clinician's point of view. Soft skill courses such as ethics in research, scientific writing, statistics and bioinformatics, etc. complement the IRTG curriculum.