Dr. Christian Braun

Dr. Christian Karl Braun is a medical resident at the Department for Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and a postdoc researcher and clinician scientist at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Trauma Immunology (ITI; Director: Prof. Dr. M. Huber-Lang) and at the Institute of Clinical Transfusion Medicine and Immunogenetics Ulm (IKT; Director: Prof. Dr. H. Schrezenmeier).

As a junior group leader at the ITI between 2019 and 2022 his research focused on acute coagulopathy and complementopathy after trauma and hemorrhagic shock. Severe trauma is one of the world’s leading causes of death in the younger population. In the course of extensive tissue trauma and hemorrhage, systemic inflammation may lead to overshooting activation of both the hemostatic and the innate immune system. This may subsequently lead to both uncontrolled microvascular thrombosis and consumption of plasmatic hemostatic factors and thrombocytes, clinically referred to as disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC). Extensive activation of the complement system and hypoxia-induced acidosis may further aggravate DIC and worsen patient outcome. Christian and his team have established a translational ex vivo model for human whole blood to analyze pathomechanisms of DIC, the cross talk between the complement and the hemostatic system and the influence of acid-base metabolism and platelet function.

Since 2022, Christian is a clinician scientist research fellow at the IKT, focusing on the pathophysiology of inborn errors of immunity. He currently leads a project investigating genetic defects in the ribonucleoprotein complexes RNase P and MRP, that clinically present with musculoskeletal dysplasia, organ malformation, impaired hematopoiesis and severe combined immunodeficiency. The RNases P/MRP comprise distinct non-coding RNAs and several proteins and are associated with tRNA- and rRNA-processing, cell cycle regulation and telomerase activity.