Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München (LMU)

The LMU Munich builds upon its success in the Excellence Initiative to further strengthen its position as one of the leading European research university on an international level. In this Germany-wide competition promoting top-level university research LMU Munich was awarded thereby receiving the highest level of appropriations. The university has a classical academic profile including natural sciences and medicine. The Medical Centre of the LMU provides the maximum level of care and the highest standard of treatment. The department of Anaesthesiology which is among the largest of its kind in Europe has a clinical and experimental focus in the field of lung injury, hypoxia, stress and immune dys-equilibration. Together with its European and international partner space-related stress-and immune research has evolved (ESA, DLR sponsored). In its laboratories and collaborating institutes all state of the art hardware and expertise is available to support this project.
Alexander Choukèr is associate professor of Anesthesiology and has been leading inter-disciplinary teams for clinical and experimental rearch as well as in the field of spaceflight related investigation on earth (MARS500, bedrest, high continental Antartctica) and in space (ISS). He received his medical and immunological training at the LMU and at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Bethesda/USA, respectively. His research helped to unveal in vivo the role of hypoxia, preconditioning and adenosine dependent immune modulations. He was awarded the John E. Fogarty grant at the NIAID and received the Albrecht-Ludwig-Berblinger-Award for his work on the interaction of exercise, hypoxia and immunity. He is the coordinator of the Topical Team “stress challenges and immunity in space” and chairs the ESA life sciences working group (LSWG) since 2010. The members in the research team are all specialists with distinct knowledge and experiences, which are significant to support the study: Gustav Schelling has an established research record in neurobiology and stress research. He is an expert for the role of glucocorticoids and endocannabinoids under physiologically relevant stress conditions. Ines Kaufman has been actively involved in national/international projects of stress and immune research. She heads the management of clinical trials at the Dept of Anaesthesiology. Manfred Thiel is a specialist in the field of hypoxia-HIF-adenosine signalling. For his work he received the Dräger Award and the Georg Heberer Award.