Regenerative Medicine of Cardiovascular Diseases
(Deutsch: Lehrstuhl für Regenerative Medizin kardiovaskulärer Erkrankungen)
Regenerative therapies, either by transplantation of stem cells or stem cell-derived differentiated cells into the defective organ or by promoting endogenous regenerative processes, are an important goal of cardiovascular research. However, to successfully translate these concepts into patient care, several fundamental research questions have to be answered, and many problems have to be solved. One core activity of this group is to address such questions with state-of-the-art methods.
Research
Cardiovascular disorders account today for about 30% of deaths world wide. An urgent need in cardiovascular medicine is to develop novel therapeutic tools and approaches to restore proper function of diseased hearts and to regenerate cardiac muscle after injury. Latest discoveries and advanced knowledge in the fields of stem cell biology, developmental cardiology, and genome editing hold great promise for achieving this goal.
Methods
- Generation, culture and differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells
- Genetic modification (CRISPR/Cas system)
- Optical physiological characterization of cardiomyocytes (Calcium imaging, membrane potential imaging, second messenger imaging)
- Three-dimensional culture of iPS-derived cardiomyocytes enabling measurements of contractility and intracellular calcium
- Gene expression analysis (RNAseq, single-cell RNAseq)
- Molecular cloning, routine molecular biology methods
- Western blot, immune fluorescence, co-immuneprecipitation
- Cell injection into murine embryos (in utero and ex utero)
Prof. Dr. Alessandra Moretti
Chair of Regenerative Medicine of Cardiovascular Diseases, group leaderDr. Tatjana Dorn
Senior scientist (developmental biology, lineage decision)Dr. Jessica Kornherr
Postdoc (embryonic mouse studies)Dr. Monika Nowak-Imialek
Veterinarian scientist (porcine expanded pluripotent stem cells & human-pig chimeras)Gianluca Santamaria
Postdoc (bioinformatic data analysis)Dr. Alexander Göedel
Physician scientist (bioinformatic data analysis)Dr. Christine Schneider
Physician scientist (3D tissue engineering & functional imaging)Anna Meier
Postdoc (cardiac organoids and disease modeling)Dorota Zawada
PhD student (hiPSC-derived cardiovascular progenitors, single-cell genomics)Fangfang Zhang
PhD student (CRISPR-based genome editing of hiPSCs)Hilansi Rawat
PhD student (embryonic pig studies)Marco Crovella
Technician (animals)Christina Scherb
Technician (cell culture)Birgit Campbell
Technician (molecular biology)
Scientific Projects:
We regularly offer projects for diploma, PhD and M.D. students.
Third-Party Funding:
- European Research Council
- German Research Foundation
- German Centre for Cardiovascular Research, Munich Heart
Alliance
- Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation
Original work
Moretti A, Fonteyne L, Giesert F, Hoppmann P, Meier AB, Bozoglu T, Baehr A, Schneider CM, Sinnecker D, Klett K, Fröhlich T, Rahman FA, Haufe T, Sun S, Jurisch V, Kessler B, Hinkel R, Dirschinger R, Martens E, Jilek C, Graf A, Krebs S, Santamaria G, Kurome M, Zakhartchenko V, Campbell B, Voelse K, Wolf A, Ziegler T, Reichert S, Lee S, Flenkenthaler F, Dorn T, Jeremias I, Blum H, Dendorfer A, Schnieke A, Krause S, Walter MC, Klymiuk N, Laugwitz KL, Wolf E, Wurst W, Kupatt C (2020). Somatic gene editing ameliorates skeletal and cardiac muscle failure in pig and human models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Nat Med 26(2):207-214
Guo Y, Dorn T, Kühl SJ, Linnemann A, Rothe M, Pfister AS, Vainio S, Laugwitz KL, Moretti A*, Kühl M* (2019). The Wnt inhibitor Dkk1 is required for maintaining the normal cardiac differentiation program in Xenopus laevis. Dev Biol. 449:1-13.