New Research Group/Research Award

Dr. Daniel Reichart is a medical doctor at University of Munich Hospital and recently became head of a research group at the Gene Center Munich. For his research on aging processes in the heart, he has now been awarded with a funding of two million euros by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through its Emmy Noether Programme.

Life expectancy has been continuously rising worldwide for decades. Currently, every second german citizen is already above the age of 45 years, while every fifth person is above 66 years old – and the trend remains upward. At the same time, age presents a significant risk of chronic conditions, particularly cardiovascular diseases. In his project “The aging heart: Identifying new biomarkers for aging and evaluating new treatment approaches,” Daniel Reichart wants to investigate the aging process of the heart and the incremental loss of cellular resilience at the molecular level. “Using single-cell sequencing, we can measure the RNA and epigenetic patterns of each individual heart cell. This will allow us to characterize the heterogeneity of cell types of the aging heart with high sensitivity,” says Reichart. These insights should deepen our understanding of people’s increased vulnerability to cardiac diseases as they age. Moreover, the findings should help to discover new treatment options and answer the question why people age at different rates.

Daniel Reichart worked as a medical doctor at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), before he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University for three years. Since 2021, he is working as a medical doctor at University of Munich Hospital.