On Wednesday 14 August at 13:00, Anita Dittrich defends her PhD dissertation entitled "The Role of Metabolism During Cardiac Regeneration – the Ultimate Hurdle to Repair the Mammalian Heart?".

Heart disease is a leading cause of death in the western world, largely because the human heart cannot repair itself after an injury like a heart attack. This is generally true for adult mammals, but importantly this is not the case during our fetal and early neonatal life. Similarly, some species like the axolotl salamander can repair and thus regenerate their heart after injury all throughout their lifespan. The mechanisms leading to these vastly different responses to heart injury are not fully understood, although metabolism has been put forward as a possible master regulator. This PhD project presents an analysis of the current literature surrounding heart regeneration and the potential links to metabolism. The experimental portion utilizes the axolotl salamander as a model organism and includes a study exploring how metabolism changes while they perform heart regeneration, followed by another study in which the axolotls were exposed to a range of temperatures, which directly alters their metabolic rate, to investigate how heart regeneration was affected. Finally, the last study explores the stress response in the axolotl, which has important potential links to both metabolism and the regenerative process.

The summary is written by the PhD student. 

The defence is public and takes place in Auditorium J116-113, Aarhus University Hospital. Please see the press release for more information. 

Contact

PhD student Anita Dittrich

Mail: a.dittrich@clin.au.dk

Phone: (+45) 51787949

Read full press release