Wilhelm E. Jahnen-Dechent is Professor for Biointerface Science at the RWTH Aachen University, and the managing director of the Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering at RWTH Aachen. He received his habilitation and venia legendi in Physiological Chemistry and Pathobiochemistry at the Medical Faculty of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 1999. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Cologne in 1986 after completing his thesis work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plant Breeding from 1983-1986. He did postdoctoral research as a Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at the Plant Cell Biology Research Centre, Melbourne University, at the Joint Protein Structure Laboratory of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, and at the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He studied Biology with majors in Botany, Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology at Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz from 1977-1983.
Professor Jahnen-Dechent has published over 200 peer-reviewed research papers on the structure and function of proteins in highly diverse areas including plant pathogen defense, fertility research, and cell-materials interaction in medicine and biotechnology. His work has been cited more than 12,400-fold resulting in an h-factor of 49 (Google Scholar). He has won the Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max-Planck Society for his PhD work. His main work centers on the function of fetuin family serum proteins as prototypic blood proteins with high surface activity involved in mineral metabolism, blood coagulation and reproduction biology. Practical consequences of this research include the potential toxicity and clearing of nanoparticles with medical applications, the diagnosis and therapy of calcification disease and fertility control in humans.
Professor Jahnen-Dechent has chaired or assisted the organization of over 20 international scientific symposia to date, has given over 100 invited lectures, and serves as a regular reviewer of journals in the biomedical field, reviewing over 30 manuscripts annually. He is currently president of the German Society for Biomaterials. Additionally, he actively consults with industries in applications of materials in biotechnologies and medicine.
Selected Publications
[1] Dietzel E, Wessling J, Floehr J, Schäfer C, Ensslen S, Denecke B, Rösing B, Neulen J, Veitinger T, Spehr M, Tropartz T, Tolba R, Renné T, Egert A, Schorle H, Gottenbusch Y, Hildebrand A, Yiallouros I, Stöcker W, Weiskirchen R, Jahnen-Dechent W. Fetuin-B, a liver-derived plasma protein is essential for fertilization. Dev Cell. 2013; 25:106–112.
[2] Leifert A, Pan Y, Kinkeldey A, Schiefer F, Setzler J, Scheel O, Lichtenbeld H, Schmid G, Wenzel W, Jahnen-Dechent W*, Simon U*. Differential hERG ion channel activity of ultrasmall gold nanoparticles. PNAS. 2013; 110:8004–8009.
[3] Herrmann M, Schäfer C, Heiss A, Gräber S, Kinkeldey A, Büscher A, Schmitt MMN, Bornemann J, Nimmerjahn F, Herrmann M, Helming L, Gordon S, Jahnen-Dechent W. Clearance of fetuin-a-containing calciprotein particles is mediated by scavenger receptor-a. Circ Res. 2012; 111:575–584.
[4] Jahnen-Dechent W, Heiss A, Schäfer C, Ketteler M. Fetuin-a regulation of calcified matrix metabolism. Circ Res. 2011;108:1494–1509.
[5] Schäfer C, Heiss A, Schwarz A, Westenfeld R, Ketteler M, Floege J, Müller-Esterl W, Schinke T, and Jahnen-Dechent W. The serum protein alpha 2-Heremans-Schmid glycoprotein/fetuin-A is a systemically acting inhibitor of ectopic calcification. J Clin Invest. 2003;112:357–366.
For a full list of publications query PubMed using the following search terms ((jahnen-dechent[Author]) OR (jahnen-w[Author]))
Supervisor of project 12 - Innovative platforms to generate fetuin-A based imaging agents for diagnosis and treatment of microcalcification
