Thomas Eschenhagen, MD, is Professor of Pharmacology and Director of the Department of Experimental Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf, Germany, and, since 2011, Speaker of the German Centre of Cardiovascular Research (DZHK). He is a member of the German Academy of Science Leopoldina (2008) and Past-President of the International Society for Heart Research (2019-2022). He pioneered the engineered heart tissue (EHT) technology in 1994, which, in combination with human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes, provides a medium throughput assay for drug testing and hiPSC-based disease modeling. The development of the latter application is supported by an ERC Advanced Grant since 2014. Pluripotent stem cell-derived EHTs were shown to repair infarcted (guinea pig) hearts, and current efforts of the group are directed towards clinical translation of this approach.
