MHH: 1.1 million euros for Else Kröner Clinician Scientist Professorship

Associate Professor Dr Jonas Schupp receives funding for his research into chronic lung diseases

Enjoying more research time thanks to his EKFS professorship: Dr Jonas Schupp. Copyright: private

[Translate to Englisch:] Förderer und Geförderter: Der Vorstandsvorsitzende der Else-Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung Prof. Dr. Michael Madeja mit PD Dr. Jonas Schupp. Copyright: Angelika Zwick

In order to provide patients with optimal care, the latest scientific findings must be incorporated into diagnostics and therapy. This requires so-called clinician scientists. These are doctors who not only have excellent clinical training, but also excellent scientific training. The attractiveness of this career path is still limited, as there is a lack of suitable follow-up positions once existing funding programmes expire. The Clinician Scientist Professorships of the Else Kröner Fresenius Foundation (EKFS) offer a solution. They offer doctors with outstanding achievements in patient care and research the opportunity to devote half of their working hours to research and the other half to patient care and teaching in the long term. The EKFS has now awarded three such professorships for the fifth time in a row. One of them goes to Dr Jonas Schupp from the Department of Pneumology and Infectiology at Hannover Medical School (MHH). "My goal is precision medicine," he says. "I want to develop new treatment approaches that are precisely tailored to the needs of patients." The pulmonologist researches chronic lung diseases and is now being funded with 1.1 million euros for a maximum of ten years. "We are delighted about this award, which on the one hand honours Dr Schupp personally and on the other hand once again confirms our high level of patient-oriented clinical research," says MHH President Professor Dr Michael Manns.

Precision medicine for targeted treatment

PD Dr Schupp had already benefited from the MHH's various Clinician Scientist support programmes before applying for the professorship. He has been taking part in the "CORE 100 Pilot" advanced clinician scientist programme for highly qualified doctors who have completed their specialist training for almost two years now. As part of the new professorship, the pulmonologist, who also heads a working group at the German Centre for Lung Research (DZL) at the BREATH Hannover site, will focus on interstitial lung diseases. This disparate group of different lung diseases affects tissue around the alveoli - known as the interstitium in technical jargon. They can occur in many rheumatic diseases and after lung transplantation. The lung tissue becomes increasingly scarred and in many cases leads to pulmonary fibrosis, in which the lungs harden and no longer function properly. The physician has long been dedicated to basic research in the field of the lungs. Before coming to the MHH in 2021, he spent four years at the renowned Yale School of Medicine at Yale University in the USA researching pulmonary fibrosis

Finding biomarkers for diagnosis and therapy

In order to understand what happens in the individual cells of the diseased organ, PD Dr Schupp uses modern technologies such as single cell RNA sequencing. Single-cell RNA sequencing technology makes it possible to analyse the genetic information translated into RNA of thousands of cells in a single sample. It is a kind of special camera that visualises their transcriptome - the entirety of all genes that are read and transcribed into RNA at a specific point in time. This makes it possible to better understand pathological changes at cellular level. With the help of "spatial transcriptomics", the altered cells in tissue sections can also be assigned to their spatial location. Thanks to this technology, the scientist has already discovered cell groups that only exist in diseased lung tissue, but not in healthy lungs. He now wants to use the new methods to find and test biomarkers for the early detection of lung diseases, the assessment of disease progression and new molecular therapeutic approaches.

Text: Kirsten Pötzke