Jochen Wilhelm is senior scientist at the Institute for Lung Health (ILH), Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), Germany, where he leads the platform “Genomics and Bioinformatics” together with Marek Bartkuhn. He is also faculty member at the German Center for Lung Research (Deutsches Zentrum für Lungenforschung, DZL) and chief statistician of the European IPF Registry and Biobank (eurIPFreg).
Jochen Wilhelm was born in Giessen and studies Biology and practical informatics at the JLU Giessen. After receiving his Diploma in Biology, he received a scholarship of the graduate college “Molecular biology and pharmacology” and finished his PhD (Dr. rer. nat) in Biochemistry at the department of biochemistry in the faculty of biology. After his PhD he started a lab for microarray analyses in a collaborative research centre in the faculty of medicine and became principle investigator for biostatistics andmicroarray analytics at the Max-Plack-Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim. Since this time, he is given lectures for biostatistics and bioinformatics in the PhD program Molecular Biology and Medicine of the Lung (MBML) at the University of Giessen and Marburg Lung Center (UGMLC). As UGMLC faculty member and head of the UGMLC microarray core facility he also became principle investigator for systems biology of the lung at the DZL. Dr. Wilhelm is currently project leader of the central resource facility Virus genomics and host transcriptomics of the collaborative research centre 1021 (RNA viruses) and of the core unit Genome signatures of pathogen-host interaction in the infected and injured lung of the clinical research unit 309 (Virus-induced lung injury). He published 114 research papers (up to 03/2021) in well-renowned scientific journals such as Nature Metabolism, Nature Communications, Circulation, Journal of Clinical Investigation, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, European Respiratory Journal, Cardiovascular Research, Thorax, Clinical Chemistry, Nucleic Acids Research and others. He contributed chapters in several books about gene expression measurement technologies.
Marek Bartkuhn is an FCMH professor for Biomedical Informatics and Systems Medicine in the medical faculty of the JLU. Together with Dr. Jochen Wilhelm he runs the Genomics and Bioinformatics core facility within the ILH.
Marek Bartkuhn was born in Hanau, Germany, and studied biology at the JLU Giessen. After he had finished is PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) he performed his postdoc and intensified his studies on epigenetic control of gene transcription and the regulation of higher order chromatin structure by insulator proteins. During this time, he started to focus his scientific endeavors towards different -omics approaches like gene expression microarrays or tiling arrays for the genome-wide identification of binding sites of DNA-binding proteins like transcription factors. Thereafter, he went on and became principle investigator of the bioinformatics service project of the international collaborative research center TRR81, providing bioinformatics support to a large community of scientific groups interested in the complex regulatory circuits underlying gene regulation. He published in many renowned journals like Nature, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communications, Molecular Cell, Cell Reports, Genome Research, Leukemia, PNAS, EMBO and Nucleic Acid Research.
The genomics and bioinformatics platform will make transcriptomic, genomic, and epigenetic analysis by next-generation sequencing available to all groups in the ILH. This includes the generation, management, analysis and interpretation of the resulting data with state-of-the art analyses including single-cell-, spatial-, pseudo-time- and RNA velocity analyses to get the most complete picture of cellular organization, differentiation and fate. The subsequent figure gives an overview of the various technological approaches. Concretely, the collaboration with the different experimental ILH scientists include:
Dr. Jochen Wilhelm
Institute for lung health (ILH)
Member of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL)
Universities of Giessen and Marburg Lung Center (UGMLC)
Justus Liebig University Giessen
Aulweg 132
35392 Giessen
Tel: +49 (0) 641 99 36470 (office)
Tel: +49 (0) 641 99 36463 (lab)
Email:
jochen.wilhelm@innere.med.uni-giessen.de
Prof. Dr. Marek Bartkuhn
Biomedical Informatics and Systems Medicine
Science Unit for Basic and Clinical Medicine
Institute for lung health (ILH)
Justus Liebig University Giessen
Aulweg 128
35392 Giessen
Tel: +49 (0) 641 99 36470 (CIGL )
Tel: +49 (0) 641 99 30522 (ForMed )
Email:
marek.bartkuhn@gen.bio.uni-giessen.de
Better, J., Estiri, M., Wetstein, M., Pervizaj-Oruqaj, L., Malainou, C., Ogungbemi-Alt, V., Ferrero, M. R., Langelage, M., Kuznetsova, I., Vazquez-Armendariz, A. I., Kimmig, L., Pak, O., Mansouri, S., Savai, R., Wilhelm, J., Alexopoulos, I., Sommer, N., Herold, S., & Matt, U. (2025). Cell type-specific efferocytosis determines functional plasticity of alveolar macrophages. Science Immunology, 10(107), eadl3852. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciimmunol.adl3852
Funk, J. S., Klimovich, M., Drangenstein, D., Pielhoop, O., Hunold, P., Borowek, A., Noeparast, M., Pavlakis, E., Neumann, M., Balourdas, D.-I., Kochhan, K., Merle, N., Bullwinkel, I., Wanzel, M., Elmshäuser, S., Teply-Szymanski, J., Nist, A., Procida, T., Bartkuhn, M., … Stiewe, T. (2025). Deep CRISPR mutagenesis characterizes the functional diversity of TP53 mutations. Nature Genetics, 57(1), 140–153. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-024-02039-4
Leib, L., Juli, J., Jurida, L., Mayr-Buro, C., Priester, J., Weiser, H., Wirth, S., Hanel, S., Heylmann, D., Weber, A., Schmitz, M. L., Papantonis, A., Bartkuhn, M., Wilhelm, J., Linne, U., Meier-Soelch, J., & Kracht, M. (2025). The proximity-based protein interactome and regulatory logics of the transcription factor p65 NF-κB/RELA. EMBO Reports, 26(4), 1144–1183. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44319-024-00339-8
Lingampally, A., Truchi, M., Mauduit, O., Delcroix, V., Vasquez-Pacheco, E., Gautier-Isola, M., Chu, X., Khadim, A., Chao, C.-M., Zabihi, M., Taghizadeh, S., Rivetti, S., Marega, M., Moiseenko, A., Hadzic, S., Vazquez-Armendariz, A. I., Herold, S., Günther, S., Millar-Büchner, P., Wilhelm, J., Bartkuhn, M, … Bellusci, S. (2025). Evidence for a lipofibroblast-to-Cthrc1 (+) myofibroblast reversible switch during the development and resolution of lung fibrosis in young mice. The European Respiratory Journal, 65(2). https://doi.org/10.1183/13993003.00482-2023
Tello, K., Yogeswaran, A., Majeed, R. W., Kiely, D. G., Lawrie, A., Brittain, E., Annis, J. S., Olschewski, H., Kovacs, G., Hassoun, P. M., Balasubramanian, A., Konswa, Z., Sweatt, A. J., Zamanian, R. T., Wilkins, M. R., Howard, L., Arvanitaki, A., Giannakoulas, G., Cajigas, H. R., … Wilhelm J.,* Seeger, W. (2025). Association of Phosphodiesterase-5 Inhibitor Treatment With Improved Survival in Pulmonary Hypertension Associated With COPD in the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute GoDeep Meta-Registry. Chest, 167(1), 224–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2024.08.016. * equal last author
Vanicek, L. R., Fischer, A., Ruz Jurado, M., Tamiato, A., Procida-Kowalski, T., Wilhelm, J., Hecker, D., Merten, M., Escher, F., Kattih, B., Puntmann, V., John, D., Schulz, M. H., Nagel, E., Dimmeler, S., & Luxán, G. (2025). STAT3 expression is reduced in cardiac pericytes in HFpEF and its loss reduces cellular adhesion and induces pericyte senescence. FEBS Letters. https://doi.org/10.1002/1873-3468.70057
Chu, X., Kheirollahi, V., Lingampally, A., Chelladurai, P., Valasarajan, C., Vazquez-Armendariz, A. I., Hadzic, S., Khadim, A., Pak, O., Rivetti, S., Wilhelm, J., Bartkuhn, M., Crnkovic, S., Moiseenko, A., Heiner, M., Kraut, S., Atefi, L. S., Koepke, J., Valente, G., … Bellusci, S. (2024). GLI1+ Cells Contribute to Vascular Remodeling in Pulmonary Hypertension. Circulation Research, 134(11), e133–e149. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.123.323736
Jurida, L., Werner, S., Knapp, F., Niemann, B., Li, L., Grün, D., Wirth, S., Weber, A., Beuerlein, K., Liebetrau, C., Wiedenroth, C. B., Guth, S., Kojonazarov, B., Jafari, L., Weissmann, N., Günther, S., Braun, T., Bartkuhn, M., Schermuly, R. T., … Kracht, M. (2024). A common gene signature of the right ventricle in failing rat and human hearts. Nature Cardiovascular Research, 3(7), 819–840. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44161-024-00485-1
Madan, E., Palma, A. M., Vudatha, V., Kumar, A., Bhoopathi, P., Wilhelm, J.*, Bernas, T., Martin, P. C., Bilolikar, G., Gogna, A., Peixoto, M. L., Dreier, I., Araujo, T. F., Garre, E., Gustafsson, A., Dorayappan, K. D. P., Mamidi, N., Sun, Z., Yekelchyk, M., … Gogna, R. (2024). Ovarian tumor cells gain competitive advantage by actively reducing the cellular fitness of microenvironment cells. Nature Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-024-02453-3. * equal first author
Wunderlich, T. M., Deshpande, C., Paasche, L. W., Friedrich, T., Diegmüller, F., Haddad, E., Kreienbaum, C., Naseer, H., Stebel, S. E., Daus, N., Leers, J., Lan, J., Trinh, V. T., Vázquez, O., Butter, F., Bartkuhn, M., Mackay, J. P., & Hake, S. B. (2024). ZNF512B binds RBBP4 via a variant NuRD interaction motif and aggregates chromatin in a NuRD complex-independent manner. Nucleic Acids Research, 52(21), 12831–12849. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkae926
