New Head of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine
The pediatric oncology expert develops antibody-based immunotherapies for the treatment of childhood leukemia and relies on telemedicine and digital care models for patient care.
With Prof. Dr. Denis Schewe from the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, the team of the University Children's Hospital gets a renowned pediatrician and adolescent physician as its new clinic director. On November 1, the 45-year-old thus moved to Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg to fill the professorship for pediatric and adolescent medicine. After Prof. Dr. Gerhard Jorch retired in 2019, the acting director of the University Children's Hospital was initially taken over by the former head of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Prof. Dr. Peter Vorwerk and most recently by Prof. Dr. Martin Zenker, director at the Institute of Human Genetics at Magdeburg University Medical Center. Prof. Schewe develops new immunotherapeutic strategies for the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common childhood cancer. He has already received several awards for his research in this field.
Photo: Prof. Dr. Denis Schewe. Photographer: Sarah Kossmann/UMMD
Dean Prof. Dr. Daniela Dieterich emphasizes: "We thank Prof. Vorwerk and Prof. Zenker very much for their extraordinary commitment during their provisional activities and are pleased that with Prof. Schewe we could recruit such a competent and comprehensively trained pediatrician for this important task - and together with him also new colleagues who will strengthen the team of the Children's Hospital in the future."
Born in Munich, he most recently worked as a senior physician in pediatric hematology/oncology in Kiel. In addition to caring for patients with the entire spectrum of oncological diseases as well as before, during and after stem cell transplantation, Prof. Schewe worked for more than eight years at the Dr. von Hauner's Children's Hospital of the LMU Munich, primarily in the areas of pediatric emergency and intensive care medicine as well as neonatology. His specialty is pediatric oncology, especially blood cancers. "Research into new therapeutic methods has taken an incredible development in the last decades. Nevertheless, the breakthrough in the treatment of relapses in particular has so far been a long time coming," explains Prof. Schewe. "We are therefore conducting intensive research into the development of new immunotherapies, particularly for the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)." The principle: artificially produced antibodies are used to help the immune system recognize and fight the malignant cancer cells. According to Prof. Schewe, this type of treatment is often gentler because it attacks the cancer cells more specifically. He was recently awarded the 2019 Hensel Prize for his research. With his expertise in this field, he is active in numerous national and international consortia.
Since 2020, he has been project leader of the "KULT-SH" project, one of the largest publicly funded telemedicine projects in pediatrics in Germany. Prof. Schewe explains what is special about this project: "Medical-organizational thinking from an economic point of view also requires a rethinking in the design of patient- and family-oriented care structures for children, especially in chronic diseases. In this project, we are putting the special potential of telemedicine and remote monitoring in pediatrics into practice and want to reduce the burden for the children and their families in their everyday lives. On the other hand, better planning can be done and there is better interdisciplinary networking of the various care sectors."
Prof. Schewe studied human medicine at the LMU Munich, where he also later obtained his doctorate. For his practical training, he worked at the renowned Harvard Medical School in Boston, among other places. With a postdoctoral fellowship from Deutsche Krebshilfe e. V., he also made stops at the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University at Albany (State University of New York) and at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. In 2015, Prof. Schewe habilitated in pediatric and adolescent medicine at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel. He was also awarded an associate professorship there. He holds the additional designation "Emergency Medicine" and the focus designation "Pediatric Hematology/Oncology".
Background:
In order to obtain a professorship at a university in Saxony-Anhalt, an appointment procedure must be carried out in accordance with §36 of the Higher Education Act of Saxony-Anhalt (HSG LSA). Suitable candidates undergo an extensive procedure. An appointment committee consisting of several experts evaluates the candidate's performance in research, teaching and patient care.