The most important structural objectives for this are
Infrastructure
Provision of a long-term and highly complementary infrastructure and services driven by the community
Expertise
Networking the expertise of pathology, neuropathology and forensic medicine for collaborative autopsy sample collection and processing
Information exchange
Provision of a central information exchange point for sub-projects of the NUM funding lines and for external stakeholders, including the public health sector
NATON is the successor project to DEFEAT PANDEMICs and has thus been pooling the expertise of most university and non-university specialists in Germany who deal with post-mortem examinations and the analysis of post-mortem samples since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
NATON acts as a platform for pandemic preparedness and promotes and supports post-mortem research in a variety of relevant and research-intensive areas. This approach enables rapid feedback between research, patient care and pandemic management, so that clinical and management issues can be translated into research approaches on the one hand and research findings into patient care and crisis management on the other.
The integration of NATON into the NUM enables the provision of highly complementary expertise and resources in the field of pathology, neuropathology and forensic medicine in relation to post-mortem examinations, while at the same time allowing NATON to benefit from the already available and established framework, infrastructure and expertise within NUM.
NATON is not only designed for COVID-19, but also for other, or in principle all autopsy-based projects and applications: e.g. from pulmonary, cardiovascular, neurological to oncological and traumatic issues, but also for rare diseases and control cohorts. The NATON partners have proven expertise in pathogen diagnostics for both known and novel pathogens. The already established collaboration and expertise offer the opportunity to address and support a very broad spectrum of issues from all medical fields and the public health system, in addition to further processing the issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
NATON is based on the two pillars of data platform and method platform, coordinated by the NATON Office.
