Heart valves that grow with the patient
When German President Horst Köhler awards the German Future Prize for 2008 on 3 December in Berlin, researchers and research projects funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) will once again be the focus of attention. Professor Axel Haverich, a heart surgeon and Leibniz prizewinner from Hannover Medical School (MHH), and his two colleagues Dr. Serghei Cebotari and Dr. Michael Harder are one of four teams who have made the final round of the President's award for engineering and innovation, worth 250,000 euros. This is the result of the preliminary selection that was announced on Tuesday by the Head of the Office of the Federal President, Undersecretary of State Dr. Gert Haller, in Berlin. The three scientists were nominated for the development and successful transplantation of tissue engineered biological cardiac valves for children , which grow with the patients – an innovation in both medicine and medical technology which has been supported by the DFG with funds from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.