Otto Roth Award 2016

Dr. Katharina Schregel is awarded for her outstanding doctoral thesis on "Magnetic resonance elastography for objective quantification of cerebral biomechanics in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis".

Katharina Schregel, born in 1986 in Freudenberg (North Rhine-Westphalia), studied human medicine in Lübeck from 2006 to 2013. She completed her dissertation at the Institute of Neuroradiology in cooperation with the Laboratoire Ondes et Acoustique and the Laboratoire d'Imagerie Physiologique et Moléculaire de l'Abdomen, Paris. She is involved in innovative experimental imaging in the field of neuroimmunology. The recently developed method of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) offers approaches for the acquisition of biomechanical tissue parameters that were previously known only from intraoperative situations. Dr. Schregel conducted a technically complex and extensive study in mice that develop demyelination of the brain in an established multiple sclerosis model. Overall, the work addresses the question of which cellular or molecular structures influence cerebral biomechanics. Comparison of imaging parameters and histological evaluation provided confirmation of the hypothesis that the method MR elastography in animal models can provide parameters that can help in the diagnosis and progression of multiple sclerosis to reduce the discrepancy between clinical and radiological appearance of this disease. The method is still experimental, and its potential clinical relevance now needs to be explored and validated.
Dr. Schregel is currently continuing her research - financed by a one-year research grant from the German Research Foundation that she obtained herself - at Harvard Medical School in Boston. There, she is continuing the project begun with her dissertation with a study on the early detection of multiple sclerosis lesions using MR elastography.

The Otto Roth Award is the Medical Faculty`s annual award for an outstanding doctoral thesis donated by the Society of the University`s Alumni with an amount of 2.500 Euros.
It is named after Professor Otto Roth (1863-1944), the University`s first specialized surgeon. He became head of the Clinic of Surgery in Luebeck`s General Hospital (1897-1933) and collaborated with Heinrich Dräger (1847-1917) for the development of the world world-famous Dräger-Roth anaesthetic apparatus, allowing the thrive of modern anaesthesiology.