Bernhard Nieswandt studied biology and biochemistry in Regensburg and Canterbury (UK). From the beginning of his studies, his focus was already on platelets and inflammation, an entirely new research field at this time, and he developed the world’s first antibodies against mouse platelet receptors, which became important tools in the study of these cells.
After his habilitation in experimental medicine, completed at the University of Witten/Herdecke, a prestigious Heisenberg-Fellowship, awarded by the DFG in 2002, allowed him to pursue his basic scientific research at the University of Würzburg, where he has been advancing cardiovascular and neurovascular research with groundbreaking discoveries ever since. He was the first to establish a research group in the newly founded Rudolf Virchow Center, University of Würzburg, and was appointed head of the Chair of Experimental Biomedicine I in 2008. He was coordinator and spokesperson of two DFG-funded research consortia: CRC 688 “Cardiovascular cell-cell interactions” and CRC/TR240 “Platelets”.
With his team, he has laid the foundation for two medications: a Factor XIIa inhibitor from CSL Behring and GPVI inhibitors, which have just entered clinical phase III studies. He has published over 320 papers, cited more than 26,000 times.
In April 2024, Bernhard Nieswandt received a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant for his groundbreaking research.