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Michael Gerckens receives award at DGP Congress 2019

Michael Gerckens, MD student and physician scientist in the core unit "Live Cell Imaging" (head: Dr. Gerald Burgstaller) at the Comprehensive Pneumology Center, received an award in the Section “Cell Biology” at the 60th DGP (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pneumologie und Beatmungsmedizin) Congress in Munich. His outstanding contribution was honoured by a jury at the DGP-Autumn-Conference of the Section “Cell Biology” in Essen in November 2018 and has now been awarded at the next level at the opening and award ceremony of the DGP Annual Congress.


Michael’s project is focused on translational aspects of respiratory medicine. In the work presented during the award-winning lecture “High-throughput drug screening of ECM deposition inhibitors for antifibrotic drug discovery", the scientists developed a phenotypic high-throughput assay to discover and develop new drugs against fibrotic pulmonary disease (e.g. idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis). Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a severe restrictive lung disease with a mean survival of 3-5 years.  
 

The 60th DGP Congress of the German Society of Pneumology and Respiratory Medicine took place in Munich from March 13-16, 2019 and has been organized together with the 41st Annual Meeting of the Society for Pediatric Pneumology. As part of the congress, lectures and scientific training courses, symposia, and seminars were offered for the different professions in the field of pneumology.