ISRB Rising Star Award 2024 goes to Daniel Wehner
Daniel Wehner has been decorated with the RISING STAR AWARD by the International Society for Regenerative Biology (ISRB). The prize honors early-career scientists charting new directions in regenerative biology and whose scientific contributions will have a lasting impact on research in the field. The research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and at the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin, Erlangen is being honored for his work on fibroblasts and the extracellular matrix (ECM) involved in the regeneration of the zebrafish spinal cord. Through his research, Wehner has gained deep insights into the biochemical composition and mechanical properties of the ECM, which promotes regeneration. The aim of his research is to ascertain whether and how the regeneration of nerve fibres (axons) in the central nervous system (CNS) can be made possible in humans.
Daniel Wehner's research group is investigating how some vertebrate species are able to regenerate their spinal cords after injury, while in humans and other mammals such injuries lead to permanent functional deficits such as paralysis.
In mammals, including humans, the body reacts to injuries by forming scar tissue, which is produced by specific cells – fibroblasts. This fibrous scar tissue consists of ECM deposits and, due to its adverse biochemical and mechanical properties, represents a major barrier to the regeneration of nerve tissue. In contrast to humans, zebrafish are able to regrow axons over long distances after a spinal cord injury, leading to near full recovery of the fish's ability to move. Wehner is using a broad range of state-of-the-art optical imaging technologies, molecular biology methods and innovative humanized fish models to explore which factors cause the differences in the scarring processes of the different species.
Biography
Daniel Wehner completed his PhD in Gilbert Weidinger’s lab at Ulm University, Germany, where he pioneered the use of cell-type specific manipulation of signaling pathways in zebrafish fins to show that Wnt signaling orchestrates regeneration. As a postdoc in Catherina Becker’s lab at the University of Edinburgh, he studied zebrafish spinal cord regeneration. Embracing the complexity of the extracellular matrix and the experimental difficulties posed by studying it, Daniel found that Wnt signaling induces fibroblasts to deposit a growth-permissive ECM in the spinal lesion site. In his own lab at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, he continues to derive deep mechanistic insights into the role of pro- and anti-regenerative ECM factors in CNS regeneration. His lab has, for example, shown that small leucine-rich proteoglycans (SLRPs), which are enriched in human and other mammalian, but not zebrafish, CNS lesions, inhibit axon regeneration. By combining molecular biology and physics he found that SLRPs alter the mechano-structural properties of the injury ECM.
Daniel Wehner has published 26 scientific papers to date, including several articles in the renowned journals Nature Communications and Developmental Cell. In his budding scientific career, Wehner has already received numerous awards and grants. Alongside the Hilde Mangold Science Prize from the Society for Developmental Biology, the RISING STAR AWARD from the ‘International Society for Regenerative Biology’ is the second award for the research group leader this year.
Scientific contact
Research Group Daniel Wehner
MPI for the Science of Light
Staudtstr. 2
91058 Erlangen, Germany
E-mail: daniel.wehner@mpl.mpg.de
Principal Investigator
Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin
Kussmaulallee 2
91054 Erlangen, Germany
E-mail: daniel.wehner@mpzpm.mpg.de
