Nikos Kyritsis receives “PhD Student Award in Regenerative Medicine”

The “Best Publication Award” by the Berlin-Brandenburg School for Regenerative Therapies (BSRT) was awarded to Dr. Nikos Kyritsis from the research group of Professor Michael Brand at the DFG Research Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden - Cluster of Excellence (CRTD) at the TU Dresden.  The prize is given once a year by BSRT for excellent publications which promote the research on regenerative therapies. From the 15 submitted publications the independent jury had voted for Kyritsis paper „Acute Inflammation Initiates the Regenerative Response in the Adult Zebrafish Brain “ which was  published in November 2012 in the journal Science (Science 2012, DOI 10.1126.science.1228773).

Injuries in the human brain and spinal cord cause an inflammatory response. Since decades it is discussed in medicine, if this reaction of the immune system after injuries of the central nervous system is rather promoting or inhibiting the healing process. For the first time, Dr. Nikos Kyritsis has demonstrated, using zebrafish as a model, that the inflammatory reaction is necessary for the regeneration of neuronal cells upon brain injury. In addition, they identified an inflammatory mechanism, which is regulating the activation of neural stem cell upon injury and leads to brain regeneration. The brains of humans and zebrafish might be different regarding size and appearance however they are evolutionarily related in terms of Neuroanatomy and Genetics, making zebrafish a great model to study acute central nervous system injuries and neurodegenerative diseases. Further information