Medical University Innsbruck supports young investigator

The Medical University Innsbruck supports Karina Wegleiter, young investigator of the Neonatal Neuroscience Research Group Innsbruck for the next 6 months.

Every two months the Medical University Innsbruck offers graduated young investigators interim financing for up to six months in order to support the upcoming auspicious researchers between or before project start. For Karina Wegleiter this stipendium offers her the possibility to continue her work in our group.

Karina Wegleiter has graduated from human medicine in December 2008. She has been working in the Neonatal Neursocience Research Group since 2006 and performed her doctoral thesis on the effect of haematopoietic growth factors on long-term outcome after hypoxic-hyperoxic-ischemic brain damage in newborn mice. During her studies her interest for neonatology expanded and due to the high risk of brain injury in the preterm infant she was keen on exploring new therapeutic strategies in perinatal brain injury.

In the next six months Karina Wegleiter will focus on a promising substance, which has already been shown to protective in an animal model of excitotoxic brain injury in our group - DEXTROMETHORPHAN. Now her project proposal focuses on the evaluation of Dextromethorphan on the neonatal brain after hyperoxic damage.

We are grateful to the Medical University Innsbruck to offer this possibility to Karina Wegleiter, to bridge the time for a PhD grant. Karina is currently working with great enthusiasm in our group and will now continue her work in order to continue our reserach to reduce perinatal brain damage in newborns.

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