Healthcare industry

Article - 13/11/2017

An artificial heart valve with the potential to grow

About 30,000 artificial heart valves are implanted in Germany every year. The durability of these heart valves presents a major challenge, requiring them to be exchanged time and again, especially in young patients. Researchers from the Stuttgart Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB have developed a new artificial heart valve material on which cells that are naturally present in a patient’s blood can form new…

Article - 21/12/2015

Using a heart simulator for optimal therapy

A realistic computer model of the human heart is expected to make treating heart diseases more effective: doctors will be able to test medicines and surgical techniques on the computer heart and determine the most effective therapy. Olaf Dössel, director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, believes that his team's heart model is among the top five in the world.

Article - 15/12/2014

Heart muscle cell 1.0 and 2.0 – two epigenetic programmes in one cell

All the cells in an organism have to adapt to changing requirements as they develop and grow - including muscle cells in the heart. Crucial to this process are the cells’ growth in size and epigenetic factors that play a role in modulating the expression of various genes. The role of epigenetics in cancer development has been the focus of research for quite some time. The question is, what role do epigenetic factors play in the development of the…

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.

Article - 07/04/2009

Sick hearts as instructors

In a joint project with heart surgeons from Freiburg pharmacologist Professor Dr. Lutz Hein and his team at the University of Freiburg are working to uncover the mystery of spontaneous self-healing in the case of chronic cardiac insufficiency. Initial results suggest the involvement of genetic mechanisms amongst other things.

Article - 18/09/2012

Michael Kühl: in search of the gene architects of the heart

Michael Kühl is investigating the development of the heart using a broad range of different model organisms. The developmental biologist, director of the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Ulm, also uses evolutionary and systems biology approaches for his work. Kühl’s basic research does not follow an art for art’s sake principle, but also addresses the development of new therapies for the treatment of heart…

Press release - 03/04/2011

A vision of the future: whole-heart tissue engineering

Scientists from the Department of Cardiac Surgery at the Heidelberg University Hospital have developed a bioreactor to produce a new heart from a patient’s own heart cells. The reactor mirrors the internal conditions of the human body. For example, the medium with the patient’s cells is pumped into the developing organ via small pulses that mirror the human heartbeat.

Press release - 30/04/2009

Will Ulm surgeons set new standard in bypass surgery?

A new computer-assisted navigation system, developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and doctors at the University of Ulm over the last three years, makes bypass surgery safer and more precise.

Press release - 28/11/2010

Cardiac catheter surgery for children and young adults without X-ray radiation

Heart specialists and electrophysiologists from Tübingen University Hospital have succeeded for the first time in Germany in treating cardiac arrhythmia without the need for X-ray radiation. This was done through the selection of a new method to control the contact force between the catheter and the blood vessel and cardiac walls. The intervention was successfully carried out on a 16-year-old girl and is regarded as a very attractive alternative…

Gender-specific differences are currently not only a subject of debate for experts but have also raised broad media interest. However there are very few specific investigations that are able to provide a clear answer said Prof. Volker Kühlkamp chief physician in the Department of CardiologyElectrophysiology at the Lake Constance Heart Centre in ConstanceKreuzlingen and specialist in cardiac arrhythmia.

A consortium of two universities two applied research institutes and a research-based pharmaceutical company is looking for innovative cellular models of the human heart with the aim of developing better methods for drug testing.

Press release - 18/03/2013

Med Cell Europe AG: medicine from a patient’s own adipose tissue

Med Cell Europe AG, which is headquartered in Münchwilen, Switzerland, and a member of the BioLAGO bioregion, is the only private stem cell bank in Europe that isolates adult stem cells from customers’ adipose tissue. The biotech company, which was founded in 2010, is also active in research. The focus, amongst other things, is on the transformation of stem cells into insulin-producing cells and cytotoxicity tests to explore potential damage to…

Article - 30/09/2013

Healthy hearts in old age

Coordinated by the Department of Cardiology at the University of Heidelberg, the EU-funded interdisciplinary project “BestAgeing” is focussed on the identification of biomarkers for diagnosing heart disease in elderly patients. The research partners hope that the combination of several biomarkers will allow a more accurate diagnosis of heart disease, resulting in a more efficient and effective treatment of elderly patients.

Article - 29/03/2016

The zebrafish can mend its own heart

In adults, cells such as nerve or cardiac muscle cells have lost the ability to regenerate. This is why myocardial infarction is so dangerous – damaged cardiac muscle cells do not grow back and scar tissue forms in their place. Prof. Dr. Gilbert Weidinger and an international team of researchers have deciphered a mechanism responsible for the regeneration of the zebrafish heart.

The German Research Foundation will continue to fund the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre Inflammatory Cardiomyopathy - Molecular Pathogenesis and Therapy for another four years with a total of 10 million euros. The Department of Cardiology of the University Hospital of Tübingen will also become part of the SFB.

Article - 13/05/2013

Cardiomyopathies and epigenetic inheritance

Epigenetic mechanisms, along with gene mutations, have been shown to play important roles in the development of heart diseases. Researchers from Heidelberg have discovered that the methylation of two specific genes has an impact on the development of dilated cardiomyopathy. These epigenetic modifications have the potential to be used as molecular markers and improve the diagnosis and therapy of these particular heart diseases.

The scientist Dr. Derk Frank from Heidelberg has discovered that calsarcin 1 protects the heart against pathological alterations caused by overstraining. Frank was awarded the 2008 Gotthard Schettler Prize for Cardiovascular Research.

Scientists from Heidelberg University Hospital the German Cancer Research Center and the company Febit Biomed GmbH have now developed a method that facilitates the analysis and detection of disease-causing genetic modifications for the first time ever this method enables the genetic characterisation of cardiomyopathy patients. For patients and their relatives this means that the disease can now be reliably diagnosed and specific treatment and…

Article - 19/12/2011

Wolfgang Rottbauer discovers zebrafish for use in cardiology

Zebrafish is a popular model organism for many researchers around the world. Life scientists such as evolutionary biologists, neurobiologists and toxicologists frequently use the small vertebrate for their investigations. Wolfgang Rottbauer has discovered and established the zebrafish as a model organism for cardiovascular disease research. He has also made a name for himself in this field. However, Rottbauer recalls that his efforts were…

Press release - 30/03/2011

Scientists Find Cause of Fatal Inflammation of the Heart Muscle

Scientists of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ), jointly with colleagues in the United States, have found out that inflammations of the heart muscle are caused by attacks of a specific type of immune cells. These immune cells attack the body’s own tissue because during their maturation they did not have the chance to develop tolerance against a protein that is only found in the heart muscle.

Article - 31/01/2010

A view into the genome provides information on the lipid metabolism

Since its foundation around 10 years ago the VIVIT institute in Dornbirn and Feldkirch has been dealing with the impact of disorders of the sugar and lipid metabolisms on the pathogenesis of diseases such as atherosclerosis liver damage or coronary heart disease.

Scientists from the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg have developed a software programme RepliExplore that enables the construction of individualised models for use in complicated surgical interventions.

Press release - 15/04/2010

Nycomed and Baxter receive FDA approval for TachoSil®

Today Nycomed and its partner Baxter International Inc. NYSE BAX received the approval for TachoSil a surgical patch from the US Food and Drug Administration FDA. TachoSil has been approved as an adjunct to haemostasis control of bleeding in cardiovascular surgery.

Press release - 13/11/2009

New genetic cause of cardiac insufficiency discovered

The heart needs to pump approximately 250 million litres of blood through the body during a person’s lifetime. In order to do this effectively, the cardiac muscle fibres need to be extremely resilient. A team led by Dr. Wolfgang Rottbauer, assistant medical director of the Department of Internal Medicine III at the University Hospital of Heidelberg, has discovered a protein component that is responsible for the stability of the smallest muscle…

Press release - 24/09/2009

Researchers successfully colonize a textile implant with human stem cells

Researchers at the Hohenstein Institute in Stuttgart, Germany developed a method to embed multipotent mesenchymal stem cells onto the surface fibers of common surgical fabric implants. Using such a product it may be possible to directly motivate the regrowth of critical tissue, such as myocardium after a heart attack.