Main Content

Central Project

PEGASUS is a transregional consortium located at Marburg, Aachen, Berlin and Munich. The central project (CP) is the core unit of PEGASUS in Marburg. The CP office is responsible for administrative tasks regarding the Research Unit and is the first point of contact for all requests and enquiries regarding PEGASUS.

Administration

The Central Project office regulates financial aspects of the consortium and coordinates progress reports on behalf of TPs in communication with the Deutsche Forchungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The Central Project also handles applications to ethics committees which include the entire consortium such as the use of patient-derived material from the clinical trial.

Patient registry and sample management

To date, our pemphigus registry includes data of around 100 patients. From around 20 patients we have collected and stored biomaterial at The Comprehensive Biomaterial Bank Marburg, a core facility of the Marburg School of Medizine. At the CBBMR, samples from patients, e.g. tissue or blood, are being collected and stored under high quality standards. In addition, patients’ data such as age, sex and diagnosis are documented. The Central Project is also responsible for dealing with requests and finalizing sample shipment.

Meeting organisation

The consortium organises meetings on a regular basis. We have one or two annual Retreats with all members of PEGASUS to present and discuss our latest scientific results, and the define further tasks and research goals for the consortium. We also organize annual Junior Retreats to allow young scientists to present and discuss their results in a professional environment. In this context, we encourage senior scientists to work with young researchers and thus facilitate scientific education within PEGASUS.

GEROK positions

We have been happy to offer GEROK positions for both of our the funding periods. The young clinician scientists are involved in several TPs in Marburg, Aachen and Berlin. They work on the preclinical pemphigus mouse model (TP1), the phenotypic and functional characterization of evolving blood and inflammatory cells (TP2), the impact of innate immunity on disease manifestation (TP3) and the clinical and immunological analysis of the phase-I-trial in pemphigus patients (TP8).