User:Ankersmit/sandbox

Hendrik Jan Leonard Ankersmit (* 1970 in Durban) is a thoracic surgeon, translational researcher and entrepreneur.

Life
Hendrik Jan L. Ankersmit was born in Durban, South Africa, and grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Klagenfurt, Austria. He studied medicine and philosophy, earning his doctorate in 1994. He then performed postdoctoral research at Columbia University (1997–1998, College of Physicians and Surgeons, NY), and underwent specialized training in general and thoracic surgery. In 2004, he completed his habilitation, with work pertaining to immunological alterations after implantation of artificial hearts (ventricular assist devices). In 1999, he founded the “Applied Immunology” working group at the Medical University of Vienna. Ankersmit is working as consultant at the Thoracic Surgery Department at the Medical Unviersity of Vienna.

Scientific Work
Ankersmit’s notable scientific contributions include providing the first descriptions of leucocyte apoptosis and programmed cell death in vivo in patients supported by ventricular assist devices (VADs), in patients with sepsis, in patients undergoing dialysis treatment, and in heart transplant patients diagnosed with transplant-associated vasculopathy (1999–2003).

He was the first to describe an alpha-Gal-specific humoral immune response in recipients of biological prostheses (2005–2009) and provided the first description of CD32-mediated platelet aggregation induced by IVIG and ATG in vitro (2003, 2008).

He was the first to identify alveolar pneumo-epithelial cells as the main producers of soluble ST2 (2010), and the first to describe the post-CABG immune status as immunological anergy (2005–2014).

Ankersmit first identified an autoimmune state in patients diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (2009–2013), and performed serum biomarker research in patients with COPD and lung carcinoma (2009–2012)   as well as the first prospective study to investigate air trapping/emphysema in heavy smokers with normal lung function by means of multi-slice computer tomography (2015)

In contrast to all prior stem cell literature, Ankersmit demonstrated for the first time that apoptotic white blood cells (peripheral blood mononuclear cells; PBMCs) and their secretory product prevented experimental myocardial infarction (2009). . This investigation raised the first questions regarding the necessity of using stem cells or their secretory product in regenerative medicine. Based on these datasets, APOSECTM was patented in 2008. Over the following years, it was demonstrated that this PBMC-derived “cell-free biological” substance prevented inflammatory damage in multiple indications, including acute myocardial infarction, myocarditis, stroke, spinal cord injury, and wounding (2011–2018). . In 2017, the stressed white blood secretome (GMP APOSECTM) was tested for the first time in a PHASE I human trial.