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Governance of Emerging Technologies in Medical Research and Health Care

Prof. Dr. Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor

We specialize in shaping legal frameworks for emerging medical technologies and treatment methods, aligning with global standards and emphasizing data protection, medical, and health laws. Our focus extends to fostering international, interdisciplinary research in genomics, stem cells, cancer, genome editing, and data sharing regulations. Through collaboration across faculties and research institutions, we strive to contribute to the development of legal frameworks in accordance with national, European, and international normative standards. Our research group analyzes the legal landscape surrounding emerging medical technologies, research, and treatment methods, aiming to incorporate these standards into technology development and application.

Research Strategy

The main goal of the research group is to analyze the legal framework for new medical technologies, research and treatment methods. In accordance with national, European and international normative principles, we develop standards to contribute to the further development of the legal framework. The legal standard, in turn, takes into account the interactions of new technologies in development and application. The focus of the analyses in the field of medical research and care is on dealing with legal questions on the topics of genomics, stem cell research and therapies, cancer medicine, genome editing, biobanking and pediatrics.

To achieve this goal, our group conducts research in the areas of data protection law, medical law and health law, with a strong focus on the international perspective as well as in a comparative and interdisciplinary manner. Especially in the context of data protection, we analyze regulatory models and research the legal requirements for data sharing in different models. The research projects are carried out in close collaboration with other faculties and in cooperation with non-university research institutions.

Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor
Prof. Dr. Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor
  • +49 (0)6221 54-51336

Research focus

  • Health and (bio)medical law
  • Data protection and data security law as special administrative law
  • Legal framework and modalities of European and international data exchange
  • Law of life sciences from the perspective of fundamental and human rights law
  • Comparative law in the field of data protection law, medical law and the law of life sciences

Research projects and joint projects (selection)

Individualising & democratizing cancer patient care via Artificial Intelligence (VolkswagenStiftung)

A central promise of personalized medicine is that all citizens - regardless of whether they live in cities or rural areas - can equally benefit from state-of-the-art individualized healthcare. The project will apply a transdisciplinary, AI-powered approach to precision medicine in prostate cancer in a regionally focused model project targeting 8% of the German population, with the potential to be expanded nationally or internationally in the future. This will build on machine learning methods to make targeted treatment decisions based on deep learning classifiers that integrate long-term observed clinical measurements with multi-omic data. Overall, the project contributes to the sharing of human, physical and intellectual resources in healthcare that is consistent with societal values ​​and the legitimate expectations of individuals, as well as the concepts of fairness, inclusion and equality. Furthermore, it will promote the further development of AI as a technological framework for governing the healthcare system.

Data protection real-world laboratory for data trust in network medicine – TrustDNA (BMBF)

The aim of the project is to contribute to the rule-based availability of data from network medicine for research companies and public research institutions. The focus is on clarifying the data protection design of various data trust models. The processes should be designed in such a way that patients can be involved as data providers in an active role in research projects. In addition, the aim is to link up with national and European initiatives. 

German Human Genome Phenome Archive (GHGA) (DFG)

FAIR Data Spaces - Establishment of a common cloud-based data space for business and science (BMBF)

Model-Based AI: Physical Models and Deep Learning for Imaging and Cancer Treatment (Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung)

Selected Publications

Harmonization after the GDPR? Divergences in the rules for genetic and health data sharing in four member states and ways to overcome them by EU measures: Insights from Germany, Greece, Latvia and Sweden.

Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor, Julian Sellner, Sophia Pagil, Santa Slokenberga, Olga Tzortzatou-Nanopoulou, Katarina Nyström

Semin Cancer Biol.2022 Sep:84:271-283.

Genomics: data sharing needs an international code of conduct.

Mark Phillips, Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor, Jan O Korbel, Adrian Thorogood, Yann Joly, Don Chalmers, David Townend, Bartha M. Knoppers

Nature.2020 Feb;578(7793):31-33.

Has the biobank bubble burst? Withstanding the challenges for sustainable biobanking in the digital era.

Don Chalmers, Dianne Nicol, Jane Kaye, Jessica Bell, Alastair V. Campbell, Calvin W. L. Ho, Kazuto Kato, Jusaku Minari, Chih-Hsing Ho, Colin Mitchell, Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor, Margaret Otlowski, Daniel Thiel, Stephanie M. Fullerton, Tess Whitton

BMC Med Ethics.2016 Jul 12;17(1):39.