News & Events

Prof. Dr. Lorenz Lehmann has been elected as a voting member of the Nucleus of the Council of Cardio-Oncology of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) for the 2026–2028 term. The Nucleus steers the Council’s work in education, science, clinical practice and community engagement across Europe.

Many thanks to all Council members who took part in the vote – we look forward to working with the new Nucleus to further strengthen cardio-oncology within the cardiology community.

Anthracyclines such as doxorubicin remain among the most effective chemotherapy drugs, but their use is limited by irreversible damage to the heart muscle. Our new study identifies a multi-step molecular mechanism behind this cardiotoxicity: doxorubicin causes topoisomerase IIβ to accumulate at cardiac gene promoters, driving a damaging transcriptional programme via the MEF2 pathway.

We show that SAHA (vorinostat), an HDAC inhibitor already approved for cancer therapy, disrupts the interaction between 14-3-3 and HDAC4 and thereby protects heart tissue in preclinical models – pointing to a possible co-therapy to prevent cardiac damage during anthracycline-based cancer treatment. Congratulations to Benay Eksi, Daniel Finke and the whole team on this publication!

MCL-1 is a key anti-apoptotic protein and an attractive oncology drug target, but early clinical trials of MCL-1 inhibitors showed unexpected troponin elevations, raising cardiotoxicity concerns that conventional mouse models struggle to capture due to species differences in MCL-1 pharmacology. Using a humanised MCL-1 mouse model, we treated animals weekly with the selective inhibitor MIK665 and assessed cardiac biomarkers, echocardiographic function, and myocardial transcriptomics at peak treatment (day 14) and after treatment cessation (day 21).

Troponin T rose over the treatment course without measurable loss of left ventricular systolic function. RNA sequencing showed coordinated downregulation of mitochondrial and contractile gene programmes together with activation of stress- and immune-related pathways during treatment; after cessation, troponin fell and the transcriptome shifted to a distinct recovery signature. No overt systolic dysfunction, strain abnormalities or increased fibrosis were detected, pointing to a largely reversible cardiac stress response rather than structural cardiotoxicity – supporting humanised models for better translational cardiac safety testing.

The Hector Foundation is funding our research into the effects of cancer immunotherapies on the heart with €1.3 million. The interdisciplinary consortium unites colleagues from Heidelberg University Hospital (Prof. Dr. Jessica Hassel), the German Cancer Research Center (Isabel Poschke), the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin (Henrike Maatz) and the University of Kiel (Prof. Dr. Oliver Müller, Sylvia Saalfeld). Immune checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized cancer therapy, but their cardiovascular effects are not yet fully understood.

Congratulations to Daniel Finke on the new manuscript investigating the mortality of acute coronary syndrome in cancer patients. The work provides important insights into the prognosis of this particularly vulnerable patient group.

Congratulations to Jannek Brauer on his paper published in Cardio-Oncology on the prevalence of coronary artery disease in patients with an underlying oncological disease. A key finding is the elevation of troponin in patients with elevated ESC risk for cardiovascular side effects; about 10% of asymptomatic patients with elevated troponin-T had coronary artery disease requiring intervention.

Our work on possible cardiotoxic effects of BRAF/MEK inhibitors is online. Congratulations to Jannek Brauer and the whole team!

We are delighted to be certified by the German Cardiac Society (DGK) as one of the first cardio-oncology units – an important testament to the quality of our care.

The first „Oncological Cardiology“ curriculum of the German Cardiac Society is an important step towards improved standardization of the cardiological co-management of oncology patients.

A clinically highly relevant paper on ICI-associated myocarditis is now online in the European Heart Journal – the result of an excellent international collaboration.

Congratulations to Daniel Finke for the 2nd prize at the Young Investigator Award of the 22nd Dutch-German Joint Meeting of the Molecular Cardiology Working Groups of the German Cardiac Society.

Congratulations to Markus Heckmann for his work on arrhythmias during thoracic radiotherapy, based on a targeted query of pacemaker logs of patients under radiotherapy compared to control groups.

Congratulations on the meta-analysis of cardiovascular side effects of CAR-T cell therapies, published in JAMA Network Open.

Our work on biomarker-based risk stratification in immune checkpoint inhibitor-associated myocarditis was accepted in Circulation. It was also nominated by the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) as „Paper of the Month“.

Published on time: the first German-language reference work on cardio-oncology. Many thanks to the co-editors and all authors for a comprehensive overview of the clinically relevant topics.