RAAS activation and inflammatory monocytes in cardiovascular (mal)adaptation and repair

Speaker: Professor Dr. Philip Wenzel, MD

Biography: Philip Wenzel was born July 28th 1976 in Freiburg, Germany. From 1995-2002 he studied medicine in Erlangen, Barcelona and Hamburg. He graduated from medical school in 2002 with A grades and completed his doctoral thesis work in the Institute for Sports medicine in 2003 with magna cum laude in Hamburg. After his residency in Internal Medicine, Cardiology and Intensive Care Medicine in Hamburg and Mainz, he achieved his board certificates as Interventional Cardiologist and Heart Failure Specialist. He is Professor of Medicine at the Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz and Deputy Director at the Department of Cardiology at the University Medical Center Mainz, one of the largest cardiology centers in Germany.

Philip Wenzel is Principal Investigator of the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK). In Mainz, he is Head of the advanced Heart Failure Unit HFUZ037 as well as PI in the Center for Healthy Aging, the Center for Thrombosis and Hemostasis, TransMed School, the International PhD Program of the Institute for Molecular Biology, the EndoAge consortium of the ReALity initiative and in a Horizon 2020 funded International Training Network. He serves as Speaker of the Working Group “Vascular Biology” of the German Society for Cardiology and as Co-Chair of the ISTH Sub-Committee on Contact phase System. He is Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and Member of the ESC Grants and Research Committee, as well as Honorary Professor at the CARIM, Maastricht University.

Philip Wenzel has promoted 5 PhD students and 17 MD students to graduation, who were awarded with summa cum laude in 1, magna cum laude in 17 and cum laude in 2 cases.

His research focuses on the role of (thrombo-)inflammation in vascular dysfunction, arterial hypertension, venous thromboembolism, myocardial infarction, and heart failure. He is particularly interested in the role of renin-angiotensin aldosterone system conveying systemic (mal)adaptation in cardiovascular disease, leading to disturbed tissue homeostasis, functional decline, and end-organ damage. In 2011 he discovered that monocytes drive vascular dysfunction in Angiotensin II-driven Arterial Hypertension via their pro-oxidant and -inflammatory properties (Wenzel et al., Circulation 2011). He holds a patent on blocking a tissue factor signalling pathway to achieve monocyte/macrophage reprogramming in ischemic heart failure.

Philip Wenzel pursues a translational research effort to validate findings discovered in experimental models in human biomaterial, and vice versa (Wenzel et al., EurHeartJ 2015; Karbach et al., JAHA 2016; Kossmann et al., ScienceTranslatMed 2017; Efentakis et al., EurHeartJ 2022, Brandt et al., Hypertension 2022; Garlapati et al., JCI 2023).

Host: Professor Mauro Giacca