We are moving – again!

After more than six wonderful years in Marburg, we are moving again! From October 2026, our lab will be part of the Department of Ophthalmology at the Medical Faculty of Leipzig University.

Who will be moving in?

In Leipzig, Professor Diana Pauly will be joined by our technical assistant Ute Weinbrecht, the good soul of our new lab, and by our research scientist Dr. Margrit Hollborn. But we don't say goodbye to Marburg completely: Carola Sommer stays in Marburg to finish her doctoral work on complement in RPE cells, and the Marburg lab continues as a guest professorship. Of course, Knoppers stays with Carola to keep the motivation up.

What are our first goals?

We will be setting up our lab in Leipzig and building a new team. We want to bring complement research into a new field: metabolic diseases and how they affect the retina. Together with Prof. Focke Ziemssen, PD Dr. Catharina Busch, Prof. Jan Darius Unterlauft and the team of the eye clinic as well as the whole medical faculty, we want to start clinical projects that bring our lab work even closer to patients. We are also looking for motivated medical students for MD theses – have a look at our Jobs page.

Which projects will we be working on?

We will continue our work on soluble and vesicular biomarkers in the aqueous humour of AMD patients, and we hope to extend it to more retinal diseases. In our RPE cell models, we study cell-autonomous complement in iPSC-derived RPE cells, phagocytosis together with Prof. Miriam Breunig, and how oxidative and lipid stress and in vitro ageing change complement in the RPE.

We are also really looking forward to what Leipzig has to offer. The Leipzig Medical Biobank holds carefully collected blood and urine samples from large cohorts such as the LIFE studies. Together with the group of Prof. Antje Baeumner from the University of Regensburg, we want to use these samples to test our new complement assay: a liposome-based test that measures complement activity in one step, directly in serum and without washing. We can't wait to see what it tells us.

We are also really looking forward to what Leipzig has to offer. The Leipzig Medical Biobank holds carefully collected blood and urine samples from large cohorts such as the LIFE studies. Together with the group of Prof. Antje Baeumner from the University of Regensburg/Fraunhofer IZI-BB , we want to use these samples to test the new complement assay: a liposome-based test that measures complement activity in one step, directly in serum and without washing.

Thank you, Marburg. Hello, Leipzig!

Diana