Epileptic seizures occur in the brain. Sometimes there are concrete triggers - for example, an old brain injury. In many cases, epilepsy is the result of brain damage caused by other diseases that affect normal brain activity. There are many forms of epilepsy with different symptoms. The cause is known in about only half of all cases, and mostly only relatively unspecific and symptomatically effective therapies are available.

Many patients do not become seizure-free or suffer from treatment-related side effects. In order to improve the success of therapy, a personalized and, if possible, disease-modifying treatment is required instead of merely symptomatic treatment. The scientists involved in CePTER are conducting research into this. The aim of this LOEWE research project is to better understand the causes, manifestations and course of disease and to select new, individualized therapies for patients as early as possible. These goals are to be achieved with the most modern molecular-biological, clinical and experimental neuroscientific methods available to the LOEWE research network "CePTER".

The Center for Personalized Translational Epilepsy Research (CePTER) is coordinated by the Department of Neurology at Goethe University Frankfurt. Within the scope of its 14 sub-projects, close cooperation is planned between the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME)/project group Translational Medicine and Pharmacology (IME-TMP), the Ernst Strüngmann Institute, the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and the Epilepsy Centre Hessen at the University Hospital in Giessen and Marburg.