News

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a major burden for patients and health care systems worldwide. The most common cause of CAD is atherosclerosis, an inflammatory disease gradually obstructing arteries, with life-threatening effects in the coronary circulation. Often, the circulation adapts through collateral artery formation, leading to significantly improved long-term post-ischemic outcome. Hence, timely determination of the collateral profile presents a pivotal factor in the Personalized Medicine of CAD. However, the coronary collateral circulation (CCC) development is not well predicted by traditional CAD risk factors. Moreover, manifold inconsistencies are still apparent in CCC research, mainly associated with the difficulty of quantifying CCC accurately and reproducibly.

The overarching objective of PROGRESS is to develop a tool for more accurate, reproducible and automated prediction of patients’ potential to develop CCC, which could be used for a more efficient CAD patient management.

Our hypothesis is that patients’ potential to develop CCC is, in part, determined by genetics. Thus, uncovering the genetic risk variants holds the potential of predicting CCC formation. To overcome previous difficulties of CCC research, we harness Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based angiogram image and genetics analyses aiming to improve risk stratification and management of CAD patients, based on their CCC formation profile, followed by timely application of therapeutic approaches in order to stimulate CCC formation and thus improve survival rates of patients after diagnosis. We have collected well-powered CAD cohorts with genetic and imaging data. AI-based image analysis will aid in phenotyping CCC and also to generate post-hoc surrogate functional parameters (validated against a cohort of invasively phenotyped patients) in an unbiased fashion. This provides the basis for a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on CCC performed in large detection and validation cohorts.

An editorial commentary on our article titled “Studies in zebrafish demonstrate that CNNM2 and NT5C2 are most likely the causal genes at the blood pressure-associated locus on human chromosome 10q24.32” has been reviewed and accepted for publication in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine.

The title of this Editorial is “Of mice and men and zebrafishes. A promised land of discoveries for hypertension researchers” and states that, zebrafishes are going to be the tale for hypertension research in the immediate future. 

We are grateful to the authors (Daniela Sorriento and Guido Iaccarino) for their very positive evaluation of our article.

The Editorial can be found here.

The ICG is happy to announce, that Jeanette Erdmann and Franziska Haarich are amongst the recipients of Cure CMD´s 2020 Grant Awards. According to the CureCMD press release “Grants have been awarded in five subtypes: Dystroglycanopathy, Collagen VI, LAMA2, LMNA, and SELENON (SEPN1). The projects range from a study in mouse models, to new projects in gene therapy, to an extended grant focused on genetic modifiers.”

Since 3 August 2020, the ICG has been working in Building 67 (BMF) on the first floor. The new postal address is:

Building 67, BMF
Ratzeburger Allee 160
23562 Lübeck

You can find our administrative office in room number: 067.000.10.042.00.

On May 26/27 2020 we will have our annual retreat, this time virtually by using zoom.

Due to the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic we are not allowed to travel nor to meet with a larger group of people. This is why we decided to organize our annual retreat as a virtual event. This will be a very special experience, we will see how it will turn out in the end. However, we are all looking forward to the retreat in 2021, hopefully outside of Lübeck.

After approval of our hygiene concept, we will be able to slowly start up our laboratory operations from 4 May onwards under strict consideration of hygiene measures.
The most important measure is that we had to form two independent teams, which are not allowed to meet personally in the coming weeks. We have decided that team A will now work in the laboratory from Monday – Wednesday and team B from Thursday – Saturday. All in all, the distance rules must be observed.
After almost 6 weeks of “physical distancing” these are the first steps into a life with SARS-Cov-2 and laboratory work on a hopefully soon normal level.
I am very thankful to all staff members that we got through the weeks together, virtual meetings have contributed a lot and will accompany us over the next weeks or months.
At the moment we just have to get used to the new conditions and be patient.

From April 29, 2020 it will be mandatory to wear a mouth and nose protector in our federal state Schleswig-Holstein to prevent further spread of SARS-Cov-2.

We, as employees of the ICG have pointed out already days ago that these masks are useful, not as self-protection, more in the sense of “All for one, one for all”.

We are so thankful to Viviana who provided us with these beautiful self-made masks.