The Technische Universitaet Dresden (TUD) dates back to the Technische Bildungsanstalt Dresden, founded in 1828 and, thus, ranks among the oldest technical-academic educational establishments in Germany.

The TU Dresden is the only university in East Germany which has been approved of a graduate school (Dresden International Graduate School for Biomedicine and Bioengineering) and a cluster of excellence (From Cells to Tissues to Therapies) in the first stage of the "excellence initiative". This competition has been launched by the federal state of Germany in order to promote excellence in research at German universities.

The Department of Paediatrics is one of the largest academic paediatric departments in Germany. Besides its academic duties in teaching and research the department offers medical treatment in nearly all paediatric subspecialities at the maximum level of patient care.

The Centre for Microsatellite analysis is run within the Paediatric Department and is part of the regional neuromuscular centre  nd acts as a core facility within the German Muscular Dystrophy network MD-NET. MD-NET was established in 2003 as an interdisciplinary network bringing together experts from different areas to collaborate on muscular dystrophy research.

The department also includes the largest linkage centre specifically dedicated to neuromuscular diseases. This has made a substantial contribution to the detection rate of disease-causing mutations in patients and families with yet unclassified NMDs. As the core facility for linkage analyses within the German Muscular dystrophy network, MD-NET2 the project acts as a diagnostic bridge between the clinical centers for NMDs and specialized laboratories for mutation screening.

University Dresden website

Professor Angela Huebner is a paediatrician and the Vice-director of the Department of Paediatrics of the Technical University Dresden.

Since 1998 she is leading the DNA diagnostic laboratory within the Research laboratory of the Department of Paediatrics with the focus on neuromuscular diseases.

Under her leadership the possibility for linkage analyses in NMDs was developed and extended to the core facility of the German Muscular dystrophy Network (MD-NET).

Angela's role within the project is to contribute to WP3 her laboratory is involved in the selection of LGMD and CMD candidate genes. They have further developed and extended screening set for linkage analyses of defined neuromuscular disorders. Therewith they are able to detect new families for genome wide linkage analysis to identify new linkage regions.

Contributing to WP3 Katrin and the team is involved in the selection of LGMD and CMD candidate genes. They further developed and extended our screening set for linkage analyses of defined neuromuscular disorders. Therewith they are able to detect new families for genome wide linkage analysis to identify new linkage regions.