The first three places at the 2024 Wilhelm Auerswald Awards ceremony of the Society of Physicians in Vienna went to MedUni Vienna researchers. The prize is awarded each year to the best dissertations at an Austrian medical university. First place went to Vera Vorstandlechner for a study on the formation and treatment of scar tissue.
Vera Vorstandlechner from MedUni Vienna’s Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery took first place for her dissertation "Peripheral blood mononuclear cell-secretome attenuates fibrotic effects in wound healing and scar formation".
Her dissertation focused on the genetic map of healthy skin and its cell population, the precise characterization of hypertrophic scars and potential new agents for their improvement, and the application of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cell Secretome (PBMCsec) in scars. PBMCsec improved the quality of the extracellular matrix, regulated the synthesis, degradation and secretion of elastin and prevented the differentiation of highly fibrogenic myofibroblasts. These findings may contribute to the development of new therapeutic options and serve as a basis for the clinical testing of PBMCsec in hypertrophic scars. The work was carried out in the research group of Hendrik Ankersmit and Michael Mildner.
Second place went to Hannah Christina Puhr from the Division of Oncology at MedUni Vienna’s Department of Medicine I with her dissertation entitled "Clinical, immunological and epigenetic characteristics and their association with prognosis in patients with gastroesophageal cancer".
Gastroesophageal tumors are a global health problem with a poor prognosis. Hannah Puhr’s dissertation analyzed clinical, immunological and epigenetic factors in over 1600 patients from a large European cohort. Age, comorbidities and systemic inflammatory parameters influenced overall survival. In addition, differences in epigenetic profiles were found between Asians and Caucasians. The results support the development of new prognostic biomarkers.
The third prize was awarded to two researchers: Margot Fodor (Department of Visceral, Transplantation and Thoracic Surgery, MedUni Innsbruck) for "Immune cell dynamics in normothermic machine perfusion of the human liver" and Andreas Kerschbaumer (Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine III, MedUni Vienna) for "Discovering Influence Factors on Efficacy Outcomes in Inflammatory Arthritis Clinical Trials".
Andreas Kerschbaumer’s dissertation examined key factors influencing the results of clinical trials on the efficacy of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA). It was shown that continued background therapy with methotrexate (MTX) significantly increased placebo response rates in randomized double-blind trials in RA patients. This underlines the importance of optimizing MTX therapy prior to study inclusion. The results of this dissertation emphasize the need to carefully design clinical trials and consider factors such as background therapy and study design to increase the power of the results. The findings are important for science, but also for the pharmaceutical industry and authorities, in order to design future clinical trials more efficiently and to be able to interpret them better.
The Society of Physicians in Vienna awarded the Wilhelm Auerswald Prize for the 33rd time this year. It commemorates Wilhelm Auerswald (1917-1981), who, as Professor of Physiology and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Vienna, had a significant influence on medical research and teaching. The prize is awarded annually for outstanding achievements in medical research and teaching. All persons who had successfully completed their dissertation at a medical university in Austria in the previous year were invited to apply. The selection and evaluation of the theses was carried out by the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.
