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2024

Thank you! I feel immensely proud and happy for the support and recognition of our research. A big thank you goes out to all the people behind this award, the lab and division members, the personal mentors, all the patients and tissue donors as well as the institutional supporters and funding agencies during all those years! I very much look forward to the scientific and clinical questions out there - this award keeps us rolling, thanks again! Check out the press release (in German).

This has been a wonderful collaboration with the lab of Julio Saez Rodriguez - big congrats to first authors Celia Lerma Martin and Pau Badia i Mompel who conducted all the work and carried this paper over the finish line (check publications, DOI: 10.1038/s41593-024-01796-z). Thanks to the lab of Simon Hametner at Medical University of Vienna and everyone involved in Heidelberg/Mannheim and Vienna. Make sure to check out the back-to-back work conducted in the lab of Bart Eggen at Groningen Universtiy as well - both papers focused on spatial transcriptomics to decode the cellular dynamics happening over the rim of MS lesions. Thanks also to Kellie Horan and Anna Williams for a beautiful news & views article on both papers. Check out the press release (in German).

Lab celebration!!! A wonderful review led by PhD student Natalie Ludwig has just been accepted in Trends in Immunology, another paper led by Celia Lerma-Martin has gone through a tough review process and is on a great track and the myositis paper by Sven Wischnewski was recently published in Nature Aging.

Excited to share our latest work (check publications, DOI: 10.1038/s43587-024-00645-9) on disease pathways underlying progression in inclusion body myositis (IBM). We identified a selective type 2 fiber pathology and provide emerging data about potential new drug targets for IBM and other related myopathies. The study was spearheaded by first author Sven Wischnewski, now a physician-scientist, who started the work as a MD student. The study involved a wonderful collaboration with the team of Tom Lloyd at Johns Hopkins Myositis Center and Baylor College of Medicine. Congrats to the entire team involved in this work and thanks to all patients and colleagues for this fantastic multicenter effort at the different sites in Mannheim and Heidelberg, Charité/Berlin, Ulm, Mainz and Hopkins/Baltimore. Check out the press release (in German).

Big congrats to former MD student Hannah Kapell, who defended her thesis on neuroglial interactions in progressive neuroinflammation. She recently published her JCI paper on Kir4.1 as a resilience factor in MS and EAE and now successfully defended her wonderful work - great success, thanks for work!

Sophia Schwarz, a previous MD student in the lab, defended her thesis on multiplex protein and RNA profiling along the visual pathway in MS. Big congrats and thanks for the work!

2023

Thrilled to share our work on Kv7-Kir4.1 potassium channel interaction as a resilience factor in progressive multiple sclerosis. The paper has been published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation (check publications, DOI: 10.1172/JCI164223). This has been a wonderful collaboration with a great team of people including the labs of David Rowitch at UCSF/Cambridge and Sven Meuth at Münster/Düsseldorf Universities. The work was spearheaded by MD student Hannah Kapell. We could demonstrate that the molecular mechanism can be used as a therapeutic target to modulate neuronal excitability and protect neurons during neuroinflammation and demyelination. Very pleased that our paper has been featured in a beautiful commentary by Jack Antel, Tim Kennedy and Tanja Kuhlmann summarizing our work and highlighting the translational aspects. Check out the press release (in German).

2022

Proud and happy that our work has been recognized and awarded with the prestigious Sobek Young Investigator Award for MS research. This is motivation and legacy to continue our work. Thanks to all the people behind the wonderful work including patients, mentors, colleagues, friends and, importantly, all lab members. Check out the press release (in German).

Thanks to the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University for supporting our research with a prestigious Heisenberg Professorship of Translational Neurobiology. Check out the press release (in German).

Big thanks to the Hertie Foundation to provide us with seed funding to set up our lab at Heidelberg University, Medical Faculty Mannheim. We look forward to all the research questions that are ahead of us.