Healthcare industry

In principle human tracheas and porcine small intestines do not have much in common. However both have a tube-like structure. This was the basis for Dr. Thorsten Walles extraordinary idea. In collaboration with Professor Dr. Heike Mertsching he is working on the development of methods for turning the intestines into bioartificial trachea substitutes.

Press release - 27/07/2008

White blood cells with 'icing' work far better

Scientists from Heidelberg Munich and Aachen have shown that the adhesion molecules required by leukocytes to adhere to vascular walls depend on sugar chains for effective immune defence reactions to occur. The results could open up new strategies for the treatment of inflammatory processes.

Experienced medical physicists are able to detect everything without needing an operating table or a scalpel to construct a detailed picture of a patient’s cardiovascular system. Dr. Michael Markl is one of these experts, who nevertheless require top technological equipment, i.e. magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to gain comprehensive insights into the vascular system.

Cancer cells are dangerous foodies. They metabolise far greater amounts of sugar than healthy cells. Nuclear medicine experts make use of cancer cells craving for sugar since the advent of modern positron emission tomography PET. This has led to an improvement in the quality of cancer treatment.

A new surgical repair of the aorta that obviates the necessity to open the thorax and the abdominal cavity is highly suited to high-risk patients that could not previously be operated due to concomitant diseases or previous surgery.

Scientists from Mannheim Heidelberg an Freiburg working together in the cooperative research area Vascular Biology have developed a method that can be used to create a human vascular system in mice which stays functional even after several months.

Almost half of the veins transplanted to restore blood flow in the heart become clogged again within ten years after surgery. Gene therapy pre-treatment of the vein fragments that prevents the muscle cells from entering the vascular wall might decrease the risk of this happening.

Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center have discovered a key molecule that is responsible for the immature structure of blood vessels in malignant tumors. If this molecule is switched off in mice vessels normalize so that immune cells are better able to get to the tumor tissue.

Neurologists at the University Hospital of Mannheim are the central points of contact of the largest European stroke project to date. The European Union is providing more than 21 million euros over five years for research focusing on stroke.

The basic classification of bilateral animals is based on the comparison of their embryonic development and was confirmed in modern molecular phylogeny by the analysis of the relationship of the genes involved. Conserved groups of genes are responsible for the formation of the body axes.

The method is elegant and cardiologists love it heart catheter examination. The number of catheter examinations carried out has continuously increased over the last few years. In 2005 in Germany an impressive number of 772000 heart catheter examinations were carried out.

About 500000 people in Germany suffer from dilatative cardiomyopathy DCM. Viral infections are the major cause of this myocardial disease. Its molecular and cellular mechanisms are being investigated in a transregional SFB project at the University of Tübingen.