Internist from Kiel receives Else Kröner Clinician Scientist Professorship
The young Kiel internist and scientist PD Dr. Konrad Aden has been awarded the highly prestigious Else Kröner Clinician Scientist Professorship. The research portion of this ten-year professorship is funded by the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung (EKFS) with 1 million Euros. Dr. Aden is a senior physician at the Clinic for Internal Medicine I of the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Kiel Campus, a working group leader at the Institute for Clinical Molecular Biology of the UKSH and Kiel University (CAU) and a member of the Cluster of Excellence PMI – Precision Medicine for Chronic Inflammatory Diseases.
The funding is intended to support physicians in the long term in their ability to conduct clinical research on an equal footing with patient care in the clinic. In this way, scientific results are to be made possible that can be directly incorporated into the improvement of diagnostics and therapy. Dr. Aden will receive one of three professorships awarded in competition by all 36 German medical faculties. Already in recent years, Dr. Aden has successfully dedicated himself to both his clinical work and his research projects on chronic inflammatory diseases as a research-based physician (clinician scientist).
“I am very grateful for this generous grant from EKFS. It gives me the opportunity to continue the path I started as a Clincian Scientist and the research structures I have successfully established together with my team in a predictable way,” says Dr. Aden.
Dr. Aden focuses on the molecular causes of the development of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. These diseases are associated with profound changes in metabolism, such as of amino acids. Dr. Aden and his research group are using model systems and cultures of human intestinal cells to try to understand more precisely the cause of these changes and the interplay between amino acid metabolism and immunological processes in the intestinal mucosa. The goal of this work is to translate findings on this into more tailored diagnostic or therapeutic treatment approaches.
“University Medicine combines internationally renowned cutting-edge research and patient care at the highest level for the benefit of our patients. We are delighted with Dr. Aden, who will continue to be able to combine both in an optimal way with this endowed professorship. As clinician scientists, physicians have the opportunity to bring pressing clinical questions into the laboratory, but also to recognize the clinical potential of fundamental research findings and thus shape the future of medicine,” says Prof. Dr. Jens Scholz, Chairman of the Board of UKSH.
Konrad Aden studied human medicine in Kiel, Bern and St. Louis, earned his doctorate in 2011 and his habilitation in 2019 at Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. He is a specialist in internal medicine and gastroenterology and head of the junior research group “Intestinal Immunometabolism” at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology. In 2020, he was awarded the Martin-Gülzow Prize of the German Society for Digestive and Metabolic Diseases (DGVS). Konrad Aden is part of the research consortium in the DFG funded research unit miTarget and principle investigator of project 7.
