Anette Melk

Dr. Anette Melk (MD PhD) is a Professor of Pediatrics and Transplantation Medicine at Hannover Medical School. She is the director of the DFG-funded Young Academy - PRACTIS (PRogram of hAnnover medical school for Clinician scienTISts).

Dr. Melk received her MD at the University of Giessen (Germany) and her PhD from University of Alberta (Canada). She trained as a Pediatric Nephrologist at the University of Heidelberg Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Melk’s translational work on pathways leading to impaired regeneration in the pathogenesis of renal and cardiovascular diseasesincludes basic findings and concepts from cell and animal models to clinical applications. She has pioneered the idea that cellular senescence is crucial for the insufficient regenerative capacity of donor organs and an important target in therapeutic approaches.

Dr. Melk’s clinical research projects aim to further decipher factors leading to cardiovascular and renal comorbidity in transplant recipients. She initiated the largest longitudinal clinical study assessing cardiovascular health in children and adults after solid organ and stem cell transplantation (4C-T, cardiovascular comorbidity in children with chronic disease and transplantation). Anette’s holistic view on optimization of patient and graft survival lead her build the first German research consortium that deals with sex- and gender-related differences in renal transplantation.

Dr. Melk serves on several national and international boards. She has received numerous awards, one of which is the prestigious Rudolf-Pichlmayr Prize of the German Transplant Society. She has published more than 100 scientific articles and book chapters; her current H-Index is 27.