RWTH’s Clinical-Experimental Work Garners Recognition

Kai Markus Schneider, Junior Professor of Experimental Gastroenterology and Organ Crosstalk at Uniklinik RWTH Aachen has been awarded the 2024 Theodor Frerichs Prize by the German Society of Internal Medicine for his research into a molecular circuit between the brain and the enteric nervous system that promotes an inflammatory reaction in the intestine under stress and disrupts intestinal movement. The research results were published last year in the scientific journal Cell. The prize is awarded for outstanding clinical-experimental work in the field of internal medicine and comes with 30,000 euros in prize money. This is the second prestigious award for Professor Schneider within a few weeks. The German Research Foundation recently announced they will present him with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize. “Many diseases are driven by interactions between different organ systems. We want to research and understand how these circuits work so that we can offer our patients new treatment options in the future. Being awarded the Theodor Frerichs Prize shows that we are on the right track; it is a great honor and motivation for our future work,” says the physician.

Kai Markus Schneider studied and completed his doctorate in Aachen before taking up a position at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). He returned to Aachen thanks to funding from the NRW Returning Scholars Program. He specializes in interactions between different organs to develop holistic treatment approaches for complex diseases. The physician helped to break down the so-called gut-brain axis further and discovered a molecular circuit that shows that psychological stress increases intestinal inflammation. These results are applied to modern treatment approaches, which now also aim to reduce stress signals from the brain to the intestine for patients with chronic inflammatory bowel diseases.