(Salzburg, 19 June 2023) Julian Maier from MedUni Vienna's Institute of Pharmacology has been awarded the Hans and Blanca Moser Award for Cardiovascular Research for 2023 by the Hans and Blanca Moser Foundation in conjunction with the Austrian Cardiology Society (ÖKG). In a study at the Institute of Pharmacology at MedUni Vienna led by Harald Sitte and in cooperation with Volodymyr Korkhov from ETH Zurich, the research team led by Julian Maier described the structure of the organic cation transporter 3 and also investigated mutations that occurred in patients.
Organic cation transporters have a major influence on the monoamine balance and play an important role in the physiological uptake and excretion of drugs. Organic cation transporter 3 (OCT3) is essential for the uptake of noradrenaline in cardiac muscle cells. This enables the binding of noradrenaline to intracellular β1-adrenoceptors and thus maintains cardiac contractility. Equally important is the role of OCT3 in the uptake of potentially cardiotoxic drugs into cardiomyocytes. The award-winning study enables targeted research on substances that selectively interact with the transporter and was published in the journal Nature Communications.
The Hans and Blanca Moser Foundation was established by its founders, the actor Hans Moser and his wife Blanca, to promote medical specialists in the field of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. This endowed sponsorship award is intended to promote and honour outstanding scientific publications in the field of cardiovascular research. The prize is awarded annually by the Hans and Blanca Moser Foundation together with the Austrian Cardiology Society. The award ceremony takes place during the annual conference of the Austrian Cardiology Society.
About the person
Julian Maier studied human medicine at MedUni Vienna. At the same time, he began his PhD in the 5th year of study as part of the MDPhD excellence programme in the laboratory of Harald H. Sitte. For his research, he was awarded the Theodor Körner Förderpreis 2020 in the category "Medicine, Natural Sciences and Technology" and the Rudolf Buchheim Prize 2022, among others. He completed his PhD in 2022 and has since been employed as a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Pharmacology. The findings of his PhD thesis were recently published in Nature Communications.