Angelika Hammerer

PD Hammerer-Lercher has an MD in laboratory medicine and an extensive experience, both in laboratory diagnostics and in research. This has been academically recognized by her Venia Docendi in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine at the Medical University Innsbruck in Austria in 2008. Her main research topic is cardiac biomarkers, both basic and clinical research. She started her academic career with basic research at the Institute for Medical Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Medical University Innsbruck in Austria. She was interested in the pathophysiology of cardiac biomarkers such the correlation of myocardial infarct size with plasma cardiac troponin in experimental mice models, the potential re-expression of cardiac troponin T (cTnT) in diseased skeletal muscle and the vasodilatory potential of natriuretic peptides in bypass grafts for cardiopulmonary bypasses. Subsequently, she focused on the circulating forms and O-glycosylation states of proBNP/NT-proBNP in human blood. Her clinical research concerning cardiac troponins and natriuretic peptides lead her to the working group of Cardiac Markers of the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM). In this Working Group several surveys concerning implementation of guidelines for cardiac biomarkers in acute coronary syndromes or heart failure have been performed. The aim is to monitor the implementation and harmonization of international guidelines of cardiovascular diseases by surveys, to educate the awareness and to collaborate with clinical societies. Thus, PD Hammerer-Lercher has various first author publications under the acronym CARMARGUE and presented at international meetings. Further, she is active in national and international studies for the improvement of troponin testing in different clinical settings, like peri-operative cardiac injury, new investigations of re-expression of cardiac troponin in skeletal muscle disease and implementation of the 0/1 hour algorithm of cardiac troponin. Currently, PD Dr. Angelika Hammerer-Lercher is the head of the Institute of Laboratory Medicine at the Cantonal Hospital Aarau in Switzerland. An important concern has always been the inter-professional collaboration and the training of students, which she did until 2015 at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria. Since 2016, she gives seminars for medical students at the Medical University Hospital Bern as well as lecturers in a University associated certificate of advanced studies course for laboratory students in Zürich, both in Switzerland.