Diplom Biologist; Priv.-Doz. Dr.

I am a biologist and started my scientific career with engineering of cell-permeable proteins. Tissue-engineering appeared as a fascinating new field of research to me and I was wondering if there will be fully artificial organs and even designer tissues with exciting new feature some day in the future (just think of the third generation Terminator). For this reason I joined Jürgen Heschelers laboratory to work on stem cells and tissue engineering.

If I am not in the lab you find me in the garden, motorbiking or on a ride with the horses.

Anna Bräuker is performing a project in the frame of a doctoral thesis. In her studies Anna is investigating effects of the innate immune system on cardiac cell therapy.

Veterinarian

Anne is a veterinarian with experience in equine practice and performs experiments in the scope of a DVM study co-supervised by Prof. Burk (Tiermedizinische Hochschule Giessen). Anne is focussing on aspects of equine stem cell technologies to identify novel treatments of equine orthopaedic diseases. This type of research brings stem cell technology to the clinics and paves the way for applications in humans as well. 

MSc. in Engineering

Christoph has a degree in engineering with specialization on medical engineering. He is focussing on aspects of scalable microtissue engineering.

Technical assistant: Human Stem Cell Culture and Differentiation

Daniel is managing the cell culture laboratory for our group. He is performing all experiments with transgenic cell lines in the frame of the collboration with GoBio GmbH. In addition Daniel holds great expertise in murine and human pluripotent stem cell culture and cardiac differentiation. Together with Sarkawt he is managing the culture and differentiation of the human stem cells and the development of protocols and methods for scalable production of these cells for preclinical approaches. In his free time Daniel is a master in martial arts.

Technical assistant: Cell Culture Technologies

Ellen is specialist on murine stem cell culture and differentiation. She is performing murine cardiomyocytes differentiation and culture for the group and supports our intensive collaboration with the cardiothoracical surgery department. Furthermore, Ellen has broad skills in the laboratory including molecular biology and preparation of cell culture hydrogel substrates from polyacrylamide.

Postdoctoral Researcher: Electrophysiology of cardiac cell therapy

Gabriel Peinkofer is interested in the course of cardiomyocyte engraftment after transplantation into infarcted hearts. The integration of the cells is analysed by a method called "sharp electrodes". Gabriel transplants green fluorescent cells and analyses the electrical engraftment of the cells by impaling them with sharp glas electrodes to quantify the quality of electrical coupling and the degree of maturation. Specific skills include cell culture, cell transplantation in a murine model of cardiac infarction and electrophysiology.

(Project in collaboration with Priv.-Doz. Dr. Marcel Halbach, Heart Center Cologne)

Johannes Heidenberger is performing a project in the frame of his Bachelor study. Johannes is focussing on the utilization of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in tissue engineering.

MSc.

Karim has a background of human genetics and biomedical sciences from Iran. He joints the lab to apply cellular and molecular cutting edge approaches aiming to push forward cardiovascular research specifically in the area of cardiac failure and fibrosis.

Karina supports the team as scientific assistant. She is mainly focussed on supporting our team with the human stem cell culture and performs a collaborative project on improving the purity of stem cell derived cardiomyocytes for preclinical applications.

Lea is joining the group in the wintersemester 2021/22 as a MD student to investigate aspects related to stem cell technologies and cardiac regeneration.

Mario has joined the group to perform his medical doctor thesis. He is interested in the development of scalable protocols for cryopreservation of human stem cells.

Philipp is performing his medical doctor thesis in the laboratory. He is interested to optimize a microfluidics-based workflow to generate micro-tissues for 3D cell culture and as a starting material for transplantation purposes.

Rebecca is performing her Master studies in our group. She is working a n microfluidics-based technologies for cell encapsulation and formation of micro-tissues.

BSc. Biology; MSc. Physiology; PhD

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Sarkawt Hamad has obtained is PhD in the Interdisciplinary Program Health Sciences. His key expertise is human pluripotent stem cell biology and differentiation. Sarkawt develops novel strategies for scalable differentation of cardiovascular cells from human iPS and is the expert for bioreactor technology in our group. Furthermore, he has broad experience in imaging and statistics.

BSc. Biology

Tasneem has studied Biomedical sciences at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and performed her Master thesis project in my group. In the frame of her thesis Tasneem has focussed on effects and mechanisms of magnetic cell retention. The results of the study lay the ground for a PhD thesis in the field of cardiac cell replacement therapy.

MSc. Education in Biology and Geography

Lisa Münchhalfen is a PhD student at the Medical Faculty. In her project she is focussing on the process of organ complementation in the mouse in order to define a strategy to ultimately replace the cardiac lineage with derivatives of foreign stem cells in a interspecies chimaera.

Dr. med.

Volkan Solmaz has studied medicine with a specialization on neurology. He has joined the laboratory as a Postdoc researcher. Volkan is focussing his research on cardiac cell replacement therapy.

MSc. in Cardiology

Xiaofang Ding has studied medicine and has performed a master study with focus on cardiology. Xiaofang is joining the group in autumn 2021 as a PhD student to start investigations in the field of cardiac regeneration.