PD Dr. rer. nat. Ashraf Yusuf Rangrez

Senior Group Leader, Department of Cardiology, Angiology and Pneumology, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Germany

Group Leader, Department of Internal Medicine III (Cardiology, Angiology, Intensive Care Medicine), Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein Campus Kiel, Germany

Senior Post-doctoral fellow, Department of Internal Medicine III, Department of Internal Medicine III (Cardiology, Angiology, Intensive Care Medicine) Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein Campus Kiel, Germany

Post-doctoral fellow (INSERM), Faculty of Pharmacy and Medicine, Jules Verne University of Picardie, Amiens, France

Ph.D., National Centre for Cell Science in affiliation with University of Pune and partly at Technical University of Berlin (DAAD Sandwich Fellow)

DAAD Fellow (German Academic Exchange Service) “Sandwich Fellowship”, Technical University of Berlin as a part of PhD research work

Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Cell Science, Pune, India

Junior Research Fellow, National Centre for Cell Science, Pune, India

Junior Scientist, Jubilant Biosys, Bangalore, India

Habilitation and Venia Legendi, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Germany

Ph.D., National Centre for Cell Science in affiliation with University of Pune and partly at Technical University of Berlin (DAAD Sandwich Fellow)

Master of Science in Biochemistry, University of Pune, India

Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, University of Pune, India

Young Investigator Travel Grant from American Heart Association for Scientific Session

Young Investigator Travel Grant from Basic Cardiovascular Society for BCVS

DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Fellowship, Germany

Senior Research Fellowship, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt of India

Senior Research Fellowship, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt of India

Junior Research Fellowship, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt of India

Employee of the month award in Jubilant Biosys for excellent performance

Qualified National Level GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test of Engineering) in “Life Sciences”, with 88.07%.

Simanthini-Jatkar Scholarship, a merit based scholarship given by Dept of Chemistry, University of Pune, during M.Sc.

German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK)

German Society of Cardiology (DGK)

European Society of Cardiology (ESC)

American Heart Association (AHA)

International Society of Heart Research (ISHR)

E3 Ubiquitin ligases in the heart:

Ubiquitination is a primary step in UPS mediated protein turnover, which is accomplished by the concerted action of three enzymatic steps: ubiquitin activation via the enzyme E1, ubiquitin conjugation via E2 conjugating enzyme, and ubiquitin ligation by E3 ligases. Due to presence of over 600 with diverse structural properties, E3 ligases provide the substrate recognition specificity. Given the crucial role UPS plays in cardiac homeostasis, it is not surprising that several E3 enzymes have been implicated in various cardiac processes and pathologies like heart development, signaling cascades, ion channel regulation, autophagy regulation, protein degradation, congenital heart diseases and cardiomyopathies. We are actively working on deciphering the cardiac function of several E3 ligases.

Gut-heart axis:

The gut microbiome is known to play an essential role in regulating the host immune system, as well as in the pathogenesis of infections, obesity, auto-immune diseases and cancer. However, our knowledge of its putative role in human heart failure (HF), a leading cause of death in Germany and worldwide, is still limited and its therapeutic potential is under-explored. Hence, we here propose the concept of modulating gut microbial composition and/or its metabolic products with the goal of reducing systemic inflammation to ameliorate heart failure progression.