Dr. Michael T. Heneka

Biography

Michael Heneka completed his medical coursework at the University of Tübingen, Germany in 1996. He obtained his medical degree in 1998 at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the University of Tübingen on the topic "The effect of polymerized hemoglobin on cardiovascular and renal parameters in septic shock." Thereafter he was a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. DL Feinstein, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA. In 2002 he passed the board examination in Neurology and qualified as a professor in Neurology in 2003 with a habilitation thesis entitled "Inflammatory mechanisms in Alzheimer's disease: characterization and development of therapeutic strategies" at the University of Bonn. He was offered a Fellowship in the Department of Neurosciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA, in the laboratory of Prof. K. Herrup and Prof. GE Landreth in 2004, after which he returned to Germany as a senior physician in the Department of Neurology at the University of Bonn. This was followed by a professorship (C3) for molecular neurology at the University of Münster (WWU) from 2004 to 2008. During this time he was head of the Department of Molecular Neuroscience and of the dementia clinic at the University Hospital MS. In 2008 he was appointed as Professor (W3) for Clinical Neurosciences at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. Since 2010 Prof. Heneka has been the Neurological Director of the joint Memory Clinic of the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology (Clinical Treatment and Research Center, KBFZ), University Hospital Bonn. Beyond his research, reviewer and teaching duties, Michael Heneka serves as head of the Clinical Research Unit 177 (DFG), is a board member of the BMBF Competence Network "Degenerative Dementias" (KNDD) and is a member of the BONFOR Commission. He is also the Organizing Chair of the biennial conference “Venusberg Meeting on Neuroinflammation”. In 2011 he received the Christa Lorenz Award for ALS Research.

Research Interest

The research group “Clinical Neuroscience Unit” conducts research on neurodegenerative diseases from bench to bedside. Our basic laboratory research aims at understanding molecular mechanisms of inflammatory regulation in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. Current clinical research is focused on various aspects of neuroinflammation involved in neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular diseases with the goal of developing new medical intervention programs.