Prof. Dr. Karl-Ludwig Laugwitz

Academic Career and Research Areas

A scientific and clinical challenge in cardiovascular medicine in the coming years will be to establish a more precise understanding of the regeneration of the heart after injury. Prof. Laugwitz (*1968) works on two main research areas each with a translational character for patients: (i) Basic research focuses on molecular processes of cardiac development, direct programming of cardiovascular cell types and derivation of patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), their genetic modification and differentiation as human disease models for genotype / phenotype analyses and as a source of cardiovascular progenitor cells (CPCs) for regenerative therapeutic approaches. (ii) Clinical research includes tissue engineering of artificial heart tissue and clinical trials within the ISAR Research Centre involving stent design, biological stent coating for local prevention of in-stent restenosis, anti-platelet therapies and molecular imaging of myocardial healing and regeneration.

After studying medicine in Berlin with a doctorate in 1996, he habilitated at the TUM Medical Faculty in 2002. As a Heisenberg Fellow, he went to the Institute of Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego to Prof. K.R. Chien at the end of 2002. In early 2005, he received an appointment as professor at the CVRC of the Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Since 2012 he has been Clinic Director of the Clinic and Polyclinic for Internal Medicine I (Cardiology, Angiology and Pneumology) at Klinikum rechts der Isar. His research is embedded in the "Munich Heart Alliance" of the DZHK, the SFB / TRR 152 and 267. He is a highly cited German cardiologist (h-index 52) with over 450 publications and 8 patents.

    Awards

    • Principal Investigator of an ERC Grant (2011)
    • Head of DFG Research Unit 923 (2009-2014)
    • Coordinator of a Marie Curie Excellence Team (2006)
    • Louis N. Katz Prize of the American Heart Association (2004)
    • Heisenberg Scholarship of the German Research Foundation (2002)

    Moretti A, Fonteyene L, Giesert F., Hoppmann O, et al. Laugwitz KL, Wolf E, Wurst W, Kupatt C: “Somatic gene editing ameliorates skeletal and cardiac muscle failure in pig and human models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy”. Nat Med. 2020; 26: 207-214.

    Abstract

    Schüpke S, Neumann FJ, et al. Laugwitz KL, Kastrati A, ISAR-REACT5 Trial Investigators: “Ticagrelor or prasugrel in patients with acute coronary syndrome”. N. Engl. J. Med. 2019; 381: 1524-1534.

    Abstract

    Moretti A, Bellin M, Welling A, Jung CB, Lam JT, Bott-Flügel L, Dorn T, Gödel A, Höhnke C, Hofmann F, Seyfarth M, Sinnecker D, Schömig A, Laugwitz KL: „Patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cell models for long-QT syndrome”. N Engl J Med. 2010; Epub Jul 21.

    Abstract

    Moretti A, Caron L, Nakano A, Lam J, Chen Y, Qyang Y, Sasaki M, Yunfu S, Evans S, Laugwitz KL, Chien KR: “Multipotent embryonic Isl1+ progenitor cells lead to cardiac, smooth muscle, and endothelial cell diversification”. Cell. 2006; 127: 1151-1165.

    Abstract

    Laugwitz KL, Moretti A, Lam J, Gruber P, Chen Y, Woodard S, Lin LZ, Cai CL, Lu M, Reth M, Platoshyn O, Yuan J, Evans S, Chien KR: "Postnatal Isl1+ cardioblasts enter fully differentiated cardiomyocyte lineages." Nature. 2005; 433: 647-653.

    Abstract