Walter Land

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Walter Gottlieb Land (born October 3, 1938 in Eitorf , Siegkreis) is a German surgeon . He became known for his pioneering work in the field of transplant medicine and transplant immunology. In 1977/78 he promoted post-mortem organ donation by founding and introducing the "Munich Model", a form of organization that led to a significant increase in the availability of donor organs and was later established in a slightly modified form at all German transplant centers. In 1979 he carried out the first pancreas transplant and in 1994 the first live kidney transplant in a married couple in Germany.

Live and act

Walter Land studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg im Breisgau , Edinburgh and Düsseldorf from 1958 to 1964 and received his doctorate in Düsseldorf in 1966. med. PhD . As a band leader he earned pocket money with the guitar in a dance hall and played as an active footballer in the Siegkreis area together with Wolfgang Overath and Wilfried Kohlars in a youth team.

From 1968 to the end of the 1970s, Walter Land was the captain of the Munich doctors' soccer team in Munich and organized numerous tournaments, mostly as an advertisement for organ donation .

After completing his medical assistantship in Düsseldorf, he served as a medical officer in the Bundeswehr at the troop office in Cologne from 1966/1967 . From 1967 to 1971 he worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Surgical Research at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (LMU), and in 1972 he qualified as a professor for experimental surgery with Walter Brendel . In 1975 he took over the management of the newly founded transplant center at the surgical clinic of the LMU. In 1979 he was appointed professor of surgery, and in 1986 he took over the management of the newly established department for transplant surgery at the surgical clinic in the Großhadern Clinic . From his retirement from 2004 to 2010 he was a visiting professor at the Başkent University in Ankara . In 2014 he moved to the University of Strasbourg as an honorary professor .

Land's life's work includes over 1000 scientific publications as well as co-editor and co-authorship of 18 books.

Scientific focus

Country was in 1968 at the first successful heart transplant by Christiaan Barnard involved in Cape Town, where he the patient by means of an immune serum mitbehandelte the horse. In 1981 he acted as a doctor who also treated the first successful heart transplant in Germany at the German Heart Center in Munich . In the 1980s and 1990s, Land gained international recognition as a transplant surgeon in the fields of experimental and clinical organ transplantation, immunosuppression , transplant ethics, fair organ allocation, organization of post-mortem organ donation, and emotionally-related (i.e., non-related) living donation Kidney transplant, e.g. B. with married couples.

After his retirement he devoted himself to a modern field of immunology, the so-called innate immunity (innate immunity) , an evolutionarily highly conserved defense system of man that always responds to a tissue injury with an inflammatory response and thus usually leads to healing. Cells of this defense system recognize the damage by perceiving specific damage molecules, the so-called "DAMPs" (Damage-Associated Molecular Patterns) - a term that Land coined in 2003. However, if the innate immune system is out of control, i.e. if DAMPs are formed in excess, they can cause many serious ones, e.g. T. lead to fatal diseases. In a monograph published by Springer-Verlag in 2018 , Land comprehensively described this new paradigm in immunology.

According to more recent findings, innate immunity is also predominantly responsible for the rejection of organ transplants (innate alloimmunity) . His motivation to work as a surgeon in this immunological field came from a discovery he made in the course of a clinical study. On the basis of this discovery, he developed the so-called Injury Hypothesis, according to which the human immune defense is primarily directed against any form of tissue damage and not only - as taught in immunology for over 60 years - against invading pathogens. Land developed this concept further into a new evolution-oriented theory of old age, which tries to explain the aging process in humans: The innate immunity protects in adolescence, i. H. in the reproductive phase, humans against all external dangerous physical injuries and injuries. This ensures the inheritance of human genes and the human species is immortal. In old age, however, i. H. Beyond the reproductive phase, the same immunological defense system recognizes the internal signs of wear and tear as dangerous physical damage and in turn reacts with a non-ending inflammatory defense reaction that encompasses the entire organism: aging and death are the consequences.

After moving to the University of Strasbourg, Land used the DAMPs to align and expand his research area in an interdisciplinary manner. The starting point for this development were increasing publications from different biological disciplines, which indicated that all currently living organisms on our planet in the course of evolution, the daily struggle for survival against life-threatening body damage (Darwin's "struggle for existence, survival of the fittest") only with the use of Successfully designed DAMPs. By activating the immune system, these molecules initiate targeted molecular defense reactions that effectively combat infectious or non-infectious damage to the body. However, if DAMPs are excessively produced in an uncontrolled manner, they can cause inflammatory and immunological diseases. This knowledge led to new therapeutic approaches to treat such diseases by reducing DAMPs. The interdisciplinary DAMPs concept (DAMPs across the Tree of Life) , which was co-developed by Land, will attract increasing attention in 2020 at international symposia and in the context of online research projects.

Memberships

Land was the founder or co-founder of numerous scientific societies and institutions, including the German Academy for Transplant Medicine , the German and European Transplant Society ( DTG , ESOT ), the German and European Transplant School (Walter Brendel College, Hesperis Course ) and the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation ( DSO ). He is also an honorary member of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons ( ASTS ) and the European Academy of Tumor Immunology (EATI).

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ W. Land: Organ procurement for transplant purposes. Organizational model Munich. In: Münch med Wschr. Vol. 122, 1980, p. 1105.
  2. W. Land, S. von Liebe, H. Höpp, D. Jocham, E. Schmitz, U. Jensen, G. Hillebrand, H. Kuhlmann, K. Eberhard, H. Weitz: Simultaneous transplantation of pancreas and kidney. Use of a new pancreatic duct occlusion gel. In: Chir Praxis. Volume 27, 1980, pp. 15-25.
  3. ^ W. Land: Living donation of kidneys in unrelated donor / recipient pairs. In: Diatra-Journal . 1, 1995, p. 17.
  4. See Orcis .
  5. W. Brendel, W. Land: Surprising results from intravenous therapy with antilymphocyte serum in organ transplants. In: Dtsch Med Wochenschr. 93, 1968, pp. 2309-2313.
  6. E. Struck, E. König, W. Land, J. Richter, E. Albert, H. Angstwurm, J. Billing, G. Döring, G. Feifel, J. Gokel, W. Gössner, C. Hammer, U Klein, H. Meisner, R. Meyendorf, P. Schmidt-Habelmann, B. Seling, F. Sebening: Heart transplantation: successful treatment of postoperative complications. In: heart. 7, 1982, pp. 406-423.
  7. W. Land (Ed.): Breitner Operationslehre. Volume 12: Transplant Surgery. 2nd Edition. Urban & Fischer in Elsevier, Munich 1996.
  8. W. Land: Immunosuppressive Therapy. Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart 2006.
  9. Walter Land, John Dossetor (ed.): Organ Replacement Therapy: Ethics, Justice, Commerce. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1991, ISBN 3-540-53687-6 , ISBN 0-387-53687-6 .
  10. Th. Gutmann, AS Daar, W. Land, RA Sells (Ed.): Ethical, Legal and Social Issues in Organ Transplantation. Pabst Science Publishers, Lengerich / Berlin 2004.
  11. Th. Gutmann, K. Schneewind, U. Schroth, VH Schmidt, A. Elsässer, W. Land, GF Hillebrand (eds.): Basics of a fair organ distribution - medicine, psychology, law, ethics, sociology. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / New York 2002.
  12. Walter Land: Allograft Injury Mediated by Reactive Oxygen Species: From Conserved Proteins of Drosophila to Acute and Chronic Rejection of Human Transplants. Part III: Interaction of (Oxidative) Stress-Induced Heat Shock Proteins with Toll-Like Receptor – Bearing Cells of Innate Immunity and Its Consequences for the Development of Acute and Chronic Allograft Rejection. In: Transplant Rev. Volume 17, 2003, pp. 67-86.
  13. Walter Gottlieb Country: Damps in Human Diseases. ( www.springercom ).
  14. ^ WG Land: Innate Alloimmunity. Part 2: Innate Immunity and Allograft Rejection. Başkent University / Pabst Science Publishers, Ankara / Lengerich 2011.
  15. W. Land, H. Schneeberger, S. Schleibner, WD Illner, D. Abendroth, G. Rutili, KE Arfors, K. Messmer: The beneficial effect of human recombinant superoxide dismutase on acute and chronic rejection events in recipients of cadaveric renal transplants. In: transplant. 57, 1994, pp. 211-217.
  16. ^ WG Land, K. Messmer: The danger theory in view of the injury hypothesis: 20 years later. In: Front Immunol. 3, 2012, p. 349.
  17. WG Land: The (in) mortality of humanity: on the trail of the secret. Pabst, Lengerich / Berlin 2011.
  18. https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/11998/damps-across-the-tree-of-life-volume-1---plants ; [ https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/11997/damps-across-the-tree-of-life-volume-2---regulated-cell-death-and-immune-responses  https: // www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/11997/damps-across-the-tree-of-life-volume-2---regulated-cell-death-and-immune-responses ]; [ https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/12000/damps-across-the-tree-of-life-volume-3---human-diseases https://www.frontiersin.org/research- topics / 12000 / damps-across-the-tree-of-life-volume-3 --- human-diseases ]; [ https://www.keystonesymposia.org/KS/Online/Events/2021F2/Details.aspx?EventKey=2021F2 https://www.keystonesymposia.org/KS/Online/Events/2021F2/Details.aspx?EventKey= 2021F2 ].
  19. Home. In: German Academy for Transplant Medicine. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
  20. Walter Land, John Dossetor (ed.): Organ Replacement Therapy: Ethics, Justice, Commerce. First Joint Meeting of ESOT and EDTA / ERA Munich December 1990. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1991, ISBN 3-540-53687-6 .
  21. Member entry by Prof. Dr. Walter G. Land at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on February 19, 2016.