News & Events

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.