Johannes Holfeld and Can Tepeköylü represented the CARE Lab at the 47th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery (DGTHG) in Leipzig, Germany. Their abstracts „miR-19a-3p containing exosomes improve cardiac function in ischemic myocardium“ and „Toll-like receptor 3 mediates the onset of calcific aortic valve disease“ were awarded as basic research highlights and presented at the closing ceremony.

In November 2017, Can Tepeköylü received the “Young Investigator Award“ of the “Austrian Society for Radiation Protection in Medicine“ at the society’s annual meeting in Vienna.  He presented his work upon a crucial pathomechanism the development of radiation induced calcific aortic valve disease. Briefly, radiation leads to the release of danger associated molecular patterns and a concomitant activation of the innate immune system. The work is of great significance, as it reveals a promising pharmacolgical target for the prevention of radiation-associated valve disease.

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is an increasingly recognized cause of non-atherosclerotic acute coronary syndromes, predominantly afflicting young women without conventional atherosclerotic risk factors. Like all rarer diseases however, a better understanding of SCAD will require international collaboration. The CARE Lab therefore joined the European SCAD initiative of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and aims to participate in a European SCAD registry as well as to promote knowledge on the cardiosurgical aspects of this disease. Johannes Holfeld serves as an Executive Committee Member of the ESC EORP SCAD registry.

At this year’s ESC congress in Barcelona we furthermore initiated a collaboration that will together with geneticists work on the elucidation of the underlying pathomechanism of SCAD. Gene candidates identified from the SCAD registry will be further investigated with the experimental expertise of the CARE Lab.

During the 20th Congress of the International Society of Medical Shockwave Treatment (ISMST) in San Sebastian, Spain, CARE Lab members held several oral presentations and were awarded twice.  Leo Pölzl and Michael Graber were awarded  as “Best Original Works on ESWT Basic Research”  and Can Tepeköylü was awarded as “Best Presentation”.

The Annual Meeting of the Austrian Society for Cardiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery took place in Salzburg from the 7th-10th of June. CARE Lab participated actively and received the Best Abstract Award (Can Tepeköylü) and the Best Presentation Award (Michael Graber). Johannes Holfeld was honored with the „Hans-Heinz Khünl-Brady Innovation Award“ of the Austrian Society of Cardiothoracic Surgery for his work on Cardiac Shockwave Therapy.

In March 2017 Leo Pölzl was awarded the Young Investigator Award of the Cardiology Congress Innsbruck 2017 for his work on Exosomes.

Title of his presentation:
miR-19a-3p containing exosomes improve cardiac function in ischemic myocardium
Pölzl L, Graber M, Hirsch J, Lobenwein D, Zipperle J, Blumer M, Kirchmair E, Kirchmair R, Paulus P, Davidson S, Grimm M, Holfeld J, Tepeköylü C.

In January 2017 Dr. Michael Graber was awarded the Best Basic Research Poster of the Integrated Management of Acute and Chronic Cardiovascular Disease Congress in Innsbruck for our work on the calcific aortic valve disease.

Title of his poster:

Inhibition of Toll-Like receptor 3 prevents from calcific aortic valve disease.
Graber M, Pölzl L, Hirsch J, Kirchmair E, Degenhart G, Lobenwein D, Fuchs C, Grimm M, Holfeld J, Tepeköylü C.