The European Center for Angioscience or ECAS takes a bold and unique approach to prioritize the vasculature itself at center stage of vascular disease pathogenesis. While a damaged end organ needs repair, targeting the vasculature allows preventive normalization.

This change of paradigm, the starting point of what we have termed angioscience, resides in the discovery that blood vessels are not just passive infrastructure, but actively regulate and control organ function and disease development. Research into vascular control of disease development will pave the way towards precision angio-targeted treatment modalities to cure hitherto intractable diseases: This is the mission of ECAS.

Our Research Mission

The vascular endothelium does not merely act as a passive barrier, but rather forms a dynamic interface that actively controls its microenvironment. This change of paradigm has significant implications for the understanding of tissue homeostasis and disease processes. The European Center for Angioscience at Heidelberg University focuses on the active role of blood vessels and mural cells in the control of physiological and pathological processes in organ-specific tissue microenvironments, the so-called vascular niches.