About the Authors

Guido Michels

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine III, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Fikret Er

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine III, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Ismail F. Khan

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine III, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Jeannette Endres-Becker

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine III, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Mathias C. Brandt

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine III, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Natig Gassanov

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine III, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

David C. Johns

Affiliation Gene Vector Center, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Uta C. Hoppe

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: uta.hoppe@uni-koeln.de

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine III, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany, Center for Molecular Medicine, University of Cologne (CMMC), Cologne, Germany

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: UH GM. Performed the experiments: GM FE IK MB NG JE. Analyzed the data: GM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DJ. Wrote the paper: UH GM.