UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN BERLIN (CHARITE)
Organisation Description
With 563,000 outpatients and over 136,000 inpatients yearly, the Charité has a wealth of medical expertise and experience. In 2010, the Charité received more than 151 million EUR of external funding for research, holding a top position in Germany. Rheumatology is a research focus. The Clinic of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, a EULAR Centre of Excellence, has been joined by the largest rheumatology research institute in Germany, the German Rheumatology Research Centre.
Websites:
http://www.charite.de/en/research (website in German and English)
http://rheumatologie.charite.de (website in German)
The Clinic of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology is embedded in a high-ranking scientific landscape and has joint projects and close collaborations with the German Rheumatology Research Centre, a Leibniz Institute, the Max-Planck Institute of Infection Biology, the Centre for Cardiovascular Research and the Berlin-Brandenburg Centre for Regenerative Therapies. The main goal is the translation from basic research to clinical therapies. More than 30 clinical studies (Phase I-IV) are ongoing in our study department. The clinic has a long-standing experience in rheumatology, especially in connective tissue diseases. One focus of research and in clinical studies is SSc. The Charité team is a founding center in the pan-European EUSTAR initiative and of the German Network for Systemic Sclerosis. Professor Gabriela Riemekasten is an elected EUSTAR board member.
Team
Prof. Gabriela Riemekasten, Professor of Internal Medicine with specialisation in Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, is the head of the day-care clinic of the Charité university hospital and an independent group leader of the German Rheumatism Research Centre, a Leibniz Institute. She has more than 20 years of experience in SSc management, clinical trials and training of clinicians and students. She and her team have generated a large SSc cohort of more than 700 well characterised patients followed for several years. She is involved in large multicentre studies and author of more than 120 publications in peer-reviewed journals with a focus on SSc and systemic lupus erythematodes. She is an elected reviewer for the German Research Foundation (DFG).
K. Mattat is an experienced study nurse for the assessment of SSc patients and for data management within our single centre. She will coordinate material and data transfer.
Dr. Mike Becker is a member of the EUSTAR Young Investigator Group. He is author of 16 publications. He will work on data analysis, patient care and their assessment for the different WP studies and will coordinate work among the centres.
Dörte Huscher is a well experienced biostatistician involved in the OMERACT committee to identify outcomes in SSc. She is author and co-author of 46 published manuscripts and was trained in the Centre of Epidemiology within the German Rheumatology Research Centre (headed by Prof. A. Zink). She has long-term experience in data management, data banks, and data analyses and has been involved in planning a number of clinical studies.