Wild Lab

The Systems Medicine Group has comprehensive experience in molecular epidemiology and systems medicine research. We focus on investigating complex common diseases, which are strongly driven by the ageing process. Our research themes range from cardiovascular diseases, such as thrombotic disease and heart failure, to cardiometabolic conditions including obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus, infectious diseases with system-wide sequelae (more specifically COVID-19 and post-COVID syndrome), and cancer. The study of how the ageing process induces pathological changes is highly clinically relevant and a key priority for our group.

Research initiatives & strategic developments

A cornerstone of our group’s recent achievements is the successful launch of several high-profile projects funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), including EPIC-AI. Complementing these efforts, the group continues to build upon and expand its long-standing research infrastructure through large-scale initiatives such as the Gutenberg Health Study, EmDia, TheraSurv and ProsPECTUS, which provide unique resources for population-based research, cardiovascular prevention and translational epidemiology. 

Prominent among these developments is the Cluster of Excellence curATime, which has secured an initial funding of €15 million for its first three-year phase, out of a projected nine-year tenure. Members of our research group have been instrumental in this initiative, driving both its conceptualisation and execution. Our faculty serve in core leadership capacities, acting as principal investigators (PIs) and spearheading the operational coordination and strategic management of the cluster. The consortium has also facilitated significant expansion of the group through the recruitment of new team members, many of whom joined via the International PhD Programme (IPP). Within this consortium, we collaborate with a broad network of partners, encompassing basic researchers, drug developers (TRON, BioNTech), large and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies, and small-to-medium enterprises. Our collective aim is to identify and evaluate novel therapeutic targets for the treatment, diagnosis, monitoring and prognosis of atherothrombosis, and to translate these findings into actionable clinical interventions — with a particular focus on innovative RNA-based immunotherapies.

Beyond contributions to thrombosis, heart failure and epigenetics research, our group has pioneered investigations into autoantibodies as regulatory mechanisms in physiological and pathophysiological contexts. A notable publication in the European Heart Journal (Müller et al., 2023) demonstrated that autoantibodies targeting chemokine receptor 3 (CXCR3) are detectable in the general population independent of autoimmune disease or malignancy, and are modulated by age, cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease and renal function decline. These autoantibodies were associated with structural and functional cardiac alterations and predicted all-cause mortality and adverse cardiovascular outcomes up to 14 years in advance. In a translational collaboration with the group of Gabriele Riemekasten (University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, Lübeck), murine immunisation models confirmed a critical role for CXCR3 in atherosclerotic lesion development. This was corroborated by elevated CXCR3 expression in unstable human atherosclerotic plaques. Ongoing projects are continuing to elucidate the broader role of the autoantibodiome in health and disease.

Our multi-omics infrastructure has been substantially strengthened by the implementation of the Olink Explore HT platform (Olink Proteomics, Uppsala, Sweden; now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific), a state-of-the-art high-throughput proteomics technology. This platform integrates dual-antibody proximity extension assays with oligonucleotide barcoding, real-time PCR and next-generation sequencing to enable the sensitive and specific quantification of more than 5,400 proteins. It is one of the most comprehensive and high-resolution proteomics platforms currently available for large-scale human studies.

The Targeted Proteomics Laboratory within the Systems Medicine Group is one of the first laboratories in the world to receive certification for the Olink Explore HT platform. We have successfully processed more than 3,000 samples across multiple population-based and clinical cohorts. These efforts have generated a unique large-scale plasma proteomics resource, enabling systems-level characterisation of circulating protein signatures, including the analysis of organ-derived extracellular vesicles and microvesicles.

In parallel, our clinical epigenomics capabilities have been significantly expanded through large-scale genome-wide DNA methylation profiling with the Illumina MethylationEPIC 850k array. With data from more than 5,000 individuals, this resource represents one of the largest deeply phenotyped methylation cohorts in the world. These activities build upon the established EpiHF project, developed in collaboration with Christoph Niehrs and Steve Horvath within the framework of the ReALity/SHARP network.