Heart and Lung – from Development to Therapy

Heart and lung diseases represent a major disease burden and socioeconomic problem. Ischemic heart disease is the leading single cause of mortality, congenital heart disease the most common type of birth defect and lung cancer the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Current therapeutic efforts to treat those diseases are limited to the symptoms and rarely target the primary cause. Therefore it is important to develop better tools for early diagnosis and novel therapeutic strategies, e.g. through a better understanding of the regulatory mechanisms of heart and lung development.