Research Projects

Research interests of the Department of Pediatric Cardiology

The research areas of our department comprise both basic as well as clinical science addressing various aspects of pediatric cardiology. We generally intend to pursue translational approaches by investigating questions arising from daily patient care in the research lab, and, vice versa, assessing results from the lab for their potential to be transferred to clinical applications. From a clinical perspective we are interested in the pathogenesis and therapy of congenital heart disease in newborns and infants, advancement and testing of biocompatible cardiovascular implants, the intrauterine origin of cardiovascular disease in adulthood, heart regeneration and cardioprotection as well as pulmonary hypertension.

In our experimental research laboratories we focuses on different projects dealing with embryonic heart development, pre- as well as postnatal cardiac growth and organ size control, cardiomyocyte proliferation and stress response, testing of bioabsorbable cardiovascular implants and the pathogenesis and therapy of pulmonary hypertension (for more details see project descriptions on the right). We are using animal models as well as in vitro approaches to study stable cardiac cell lines and primary cardiomyocytes in the culture dish. Our methodology and expertise encompasses various histological sectioning and staining techniques, bright-field and fluorescence microscopy including image processing and analyses, cell culture, protein biochemistry, gene expression analyses and transcriptional profiling, metabolic assays as well as a number of standard methods in molecular biology.