Today, the German Research Foundation (DFG) announced that the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1177 will be funded for another four years.
Established in 2016 under the lead of IBC2 Director and PROXIDRUGS Speaker Ivan Đikić, CRC 1177 is the first consortium in Germany that systematically addresses several challenging questions in selective autophagy. In the first two funding periods, research focused on mechanistic, molecular and functional aspects of selective autophagy networks and led to detailed insights into the molecular basis of autophagy, its regulation and functions of individual selective autophagy pathways. Major areas of interest in the 3rd funding period include lipid and membrane remodeling, dynamics of organelle turnover and the role of autophagy in neurodegeneration, immunity and inflammation. The success of this consortium depends to a large extent on cutting-edge technologies: Platforms for quantitative proteomics, integrated systems biology analyses, chemical and genetic screening, imaging and phenotypic analyses were created in the previous funding periods and will continue to form an important pillar.