Univ.-Professor Dr. med. (MD) Andreas Plagemann

Head of the Division of ‘Experimental Obstetrics’ at the Clinic of Obstetrics at the Charité, University Medicine Berlin.

From the very beginning of his research career, starting as a medical student in the working group of Günter Dörner in the mid-1980s, Dr. Plagemann’s research deals with epidemiological, clinical as well as experimental studies on the long-term epigenetic and intergenerative consequences of altered concentrations of hormones and nutrients during critical periods of fetal and neonatal life. Already in 1987, together with Dörner he firstly proposed and provided empirical epidemiological evidence on epigenetic mechanisms in the materno-fetal transmission of diabetes disposition over several generations.

Up to now, the research profile of Andreas Plagemann is translational in nature. His interdisciplinary working group consequently uses a variety of epidemiological, clinical and experimental approaches, spanning from meta-analyses to epigenetic and animal neuroscientific methods to understand whether and how regulatory systems of the organism, especially those of body weight control, food intake and metabolism, are ‘programmed’ by the pre- and neonatal environmental conditions. In this context he provided pioneer work on long-term microstructural, molecular as well as epigenomic malprogramming of the hypothalamus due to materno-fetal hyperglycemia and overfeeding. Beyond basic research, Plagemann constantly aims at developing further mechanistic concepts on perinatal programming and its ontogenetic and phylogenetic aspects in general, as well as on prevention and optimization of respective public health services.