Prof. Dr. med. Johann Steiner

Johann Steiner is head of Translational Psychiatry and Deputy Director of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Magdeburg. He manages the Magdeburg Brain Bank and scientific Blood and CSF Biobank with a focus on schizophrenia and affective disorders.

He has organized the International Psychoimmunology Expert Meetings in Günzburg / Ulm since 2006. Johann Steiner did seminal human post-mortem research on microglia and blood-brain-barrier integrity in schizophrenia and affective disorders. Further important work deals with immune system / glucose metabolism interactions and kynurenines.

He published pioneering work on antineuronal autoantibodies and autoimmune encephalitis as differential diagnosis of schizophrenia and affective psychoses, which was implemented in the diagnostic S3-guidelines of the DGPPN (German Association for Psychiatry) and will be continued in the joint ERA-NET Neuron research project NicAb.

Ongoing research projects are dealing with neutrophil granulocyte function and their potential links to altered synaptic plasticity and neuronal destruction in schizophrenia.