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Research for a strong heart and unimpeded breathing

Disorders of the heart and lungs are often closely connected through human anatomy. Chronic heart disorders damage the lungs, and lung disease can affect the heart. For this reason the MPI for Heart and Lung Research conducts research on heart and lungs and thus covers two of the most important areas of medical research.

The molecular mechanisms that are significant for the development of heart, lungs and blood vessels, but also for diseases of these organs are examined in three departments. Of primary concern is the question of how the organ tissue can regenerate and how these processes can be accelerated so that cells destroyed by disease can be replaced by healthy tissue in processes generated by the patients own body. To meet this goal it is imperative to understand how the different types of tissue are created in embryonic development, which paths they have to send signals to each other and which processes are disrupted by different diseases. In this context, the significance of adult stern cells, which are today assumed to be involved in natural processes of repair in the organs, must be elucidated. If we succeed in finding the key to these mechanisms, then completely new approaches in therapy will open up that could revolutionise the treatment of heart and lung disease. If, for example, heart muscle tissue can be stimulated to regenerate and renew, then heart transplants may perhaps one day be superfluous in cases of heart muscle disease like hypertrophic or dilative cardiomyopathy. By deliberately stimulating blood-vessel formation in heart muscles, by-pass operations may also become unnecessary one day.

In order to achieve these ambitious goals it is necessary for medical staff and scientific staff to work together closely, and to occupy premises in close proximity to each other. Only by exchanging information about clinical manifestations and their possible molecular causes can new knowledge be gained. As the Kerckhoff Clinic practises this in an exemplary fashion along with the MPI for heart and lung research and the Universities of Giessen-Marburg and Frankfurt, research results can be applied more rapidly and more comprehensively. Patients from the Kerckhoff Clinic can be treated with many promising research results gained from clinical studies and new methods, and thus benefit immediately from recent findings.

If it becomes possible to stimulate heart tissue to create new muscle cells then new perspectives will open up for the therapy of cardiomuscular diseases.