Ulrike Muscha Steckelings receives the Harriet Dustan Award from The American Heart Association

The Harriet Dustan Award recognizes female investigators who have made outstanding contributions in the field of hypertension. This year’s honoree is Ulrike Muscha Steckelings, Professor in Cardiovascular Pharmacology at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM)/ Dept. of Cardiovascular and Renal Research.

Throughout her career, Ulrike Muscha Steckelings has focused on clinically relevant research relating to the renin angiotensin system and cardiovascular disease with a strong focus on pharmacology. She has worked closely with industry, where she has been actively involved in translating her experimental findings to drug discovery.

- I am so grateful that my career path has allowed me to contribute moving an academic finding to clinical application. A last step to approval for clinical use is still to be made, but if successful having contributed to improving patients’ health would be extremely rewarding. It is a huge honour to be awarded by the American Heart Association for this work.

Prof. Steckelings’ scientific interest relates mainly to the angiotensin AT2-receptor, which is a receptor that mediates healing and regeneration effects in disease. Her research is multidisciplinary and spans from work on how the receptor is activated and how it signals within a cell to its role in normal body function and, importantly, a potential use of drugs that activate the receptor for the treatment of various diseases in humans. Of significance over the past 10 years, she has been very closely involved in the preclinical and clinical development of the very first drug that acts by activating the AT2-receptor, Compound 21 (C21). C21 is currently in advanced stages of clinical development for the treatment of COVID-19 and Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.

In her nomination letter for the award, Professor Touyz from McGill University, Montréal, Canada, writes:

-Muscha is an excellent pharmacologist who has made fundamental and pioneering contributions to our understanding of the AT2 receptor. Throughout her career she has generated new data and advanced knowledge to the point where her discovery science has resulted in development of new drugs targeting the AT2 receptor. She has contributed significantly to drug discovery and development. In addition, she is an outstanding teacher, scholar and leader and above all, a passionate mentor guiding the next generation of pharmacologists

The award was established to honor the memory of Dr Harriet Dustan who became a major force in the field of hypertension by advancing the understanding of its mechanisms and developing early anti-hypertensive treatments, thus changing hypertension from a death sentence to a treatable disease.
The honoree will present a lecture during the Hypertension Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association on Sept. 29.

- This award is a huge motivation to continue my work on identifying new drug targets and bringing new concepts closer to clinical application – both in my research group and by contributing to respective initiatives at SDU. I think, the award also recognizes my work as a mentor and for women in academia, which is both close to my heart and something I will pursue at university and international level in the coming years.