Johannes Steffen receives Young Investigator Award
Dr. Johannes Steffen receives the Young Investigator Award of the Medical Faculty of Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg in the category Biomedical Basic Research, endowed with 5,000 euros, for research on the interaction between the nervous system and the body's own defense system.
Photo: Portrait Dr. rer. nat. Johannes Steffen, Photographer: Melitta Schubert/Universitätsmedizin Magdeburg
At the Institute of Inflammation and Neurodegeneration, headed by Prof. Dr. Ildiko R. Dunay, the young scientist is investigating how the immune defense of the brain functions and what impact the different immune cells have on the development and function of the brain. Recently, a innate immune cell type was identified that plays an important role in the initiation of inflammatory processes in the brain (Steffen et al. 2022). The next step is to further investigate the function of these cells in the brain to find out what influence they have on the development of the healthy brain and whether they also play a role in other diseases of the central nervous system.