Werner Risau †
18.12.1953-13.12.1998
Werner Risau studied Chemistry and
Biochemistry at the University of Münster and Tübingen,
before he went to the lab of Judah Folkman at the
Children’s Hospital of the Harvard Medical School,
Boston. There he got acquainted with the concept of
angiogenesis, which he developed further in his seminal
work, initially in Junior Group Leader positions at the
Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen
and at the Max -Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Dept. of
Neurochemistry at Martinsried close to Munich. In 1993 he
then was appointed to the position of a Director at the
Max-Planck Institute for Physiological and Clinical
Research in Bad Nauheim, which he held until his untimely
death at the age of 44 in 1998.
His main scientific interest was centered on the properties
of the endothelial cell, the cell type which is lining the
inside wall of all blood vessel. Some of the research areas
in which he was involved in include
● The concept of Vasculogenesis vs Angiogenesis
● The formation and maintenance of the Blood
Brain Barrier (BBB) and its modulation by growth factors
and cytokines