The Andersen Group

Repairing the heart

Myocardial infarction (MI) causes heart ischemia and subsequent necrosis where millions of cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) are lost and replaced by extensive fibrotic scarring. This in turn reduces heart pump function and patient life quality eventually leading to heart failure, a major cause of death worldwide.

Specifically, the Andersen group:

...develops induced pluripotent stem cell derived ventricular cardiomyocytes (iPSC-vCM) as cell products aimed for transplantation into the diseased heart to restore the heart function after MI. This is focused with a clear goal of translating the iPSC-vCM product into clinical testing as soon as possible to benefit heart patients.

...studies cardiomyocyte cell cycle -entry and -withdrawal in heart development and disease to identify mechanisms and genes that can be used in gene therapy to reestablish the lost cardiomyocyte pool after MI by inducing cardiomyocyte division.

...studies gene targets that may be manipulated by gene therapy to reduce heart fibrosis after MI and hereby preserve heart function after MI.

To facilitate clinical translation of regenerative medicine:

... the Andersen group participates in several clinical stem cell trials to treat different diseases using cell therapy. We head the Tissue establishment and OUH-CELL-BENCH, an easily accessible GMP cell culture and cell isolation facility, at Odense University Hospital which is open to researchers and SMEs across Denmark.

...the Andersen group heads the interdisciplinary hub STEMBRACE3P, where we collaborate with anthropologists, philosophers and health economists, to embrace more aspects (ethical issues, patient perspectives, health economy) of cell therapy to accelerate the implementation of regenerative medicine into health care.

To reach our goals, the Andersen group uses:

Cell culturing, research animals (zebrafish, mice and rats), heart injury models as well as human samples, positron emission tomography, echocardiography, histology, ELISA, flow cytometry, single cell/nuclei RNA sequencing, epigenetic mapping, confocal imaging, in vitro and in vivo virus mediated gene manipulation, cell product quality testing etc. For clinical translation, we also deal with regulatory issues related to stem cell manufacturing and clinical trial execution according to EMA guidelines.