Personal Statement:

Hans is transplant from his native country of Germany where he studied biology at the University of Marburg and graduated with a Ph.D. in cardiac molecular biology from the University of Freiburg. He came to the US as the first postdoc in the Murry lab when it opened its doors in 1996 and is now a Senior Research Scientist in the lab. Thus, he has seen the early beginnings of cell therapy for the treatment of myocardial infarction and was involved in studies testing the effects of skeletal muscle cell, cardiac muscle cell and bone marrow cell engraftment for cardiac repair. Nonetheless, cell therapy is still an evolving field with many unanswered questions, e.g. regarding the “right” cell type and/or cell type combination for efficient electromechanical integration of the graft cell population with the host myocardium. Hans is now specifically interested in the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for cardiac repair and their application for disease modeling, e.g. familial cardiomyopathies.