Director Prof. Dr. Rudi Balling | ||
Location Esch/Alzette, Campus Belval, Luxembourg Host University of Luxembourg Field of Research Systems Biology, Systems Biomedicine Website http//wwwen.uni.lu/lcsb | ||
The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) is one of two interdisciplinary research centres at the University of Luxembourg. Since September 2011, the LCSB is based on the new university campus Esch-Belval.
Research
The LCSB was founded in 2009 as the first biomedical research centre of the University of Luxembourg by the founding director Prof. Dr. Rudi Balling. The main goal of the LCSB is to accelerate biomedical research by closing the link between systems biology and medical research.
The LCSB currently counts about 230 employees and 15 research groups in the areas of experimental neurobiology, cell metabolism, computational biology, bioinformatics, machine learning, eco-systems biology, and translational medicine. Collaboration between biologists, medical doctors, computer scientists, physicists and mathematicians is offering new insights into complex systems like cells, organs and whole organisms in both health and disease states. These findings are essential for understanding principal mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and for developing new tools in diagnostics and therapy.
Close collaboration with clinicians and patients are of utmost importance to the LCSB. Neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease and description of diseases as networks are at the focus of the LCSB’s research. It aims to contribute to earlier diagnosis and personalized treatment, for instance through its coordinating role in the recently established National Centre of Excellence in Research on Parkinson’s Disease.
The LCSB also hosts the Luxembourgish node of ELIXIR, the European infrastructure for life science information. ELIXIR Luxembourg (ELIXIR-LU) focuses on long-term sustainability of tools and data for Translational Medicine. Translational Medicine data integrate clinical information with molecular and cellular data for a better understanding of diseases. They bridge the gap between the molecular level, findings from the laboratory, and the clinical observations and applications. ELIXIR-LU aims to facilitate long-term access to those research data and to tools for scientists in both academia and industry. This will allow the reuse of previously generated translational data to address new research questions and dramatically save time and cost.
The Centre has established strategic partnerships with leading biomedical laboratories worldwide and with all major biological and medical research units in Luxembourg. The LCSB fosters collaboration with industrial partners and accelerates the translation of fundamental research results into (clinical) applications.