The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an Advanced Grant to Sasha Mendjan, Senior Group Leader at IMBA, in support of his research on heart development. The ERC Advanced Grant is the most highly endowed European Research Council grant. The funded project is the next step in the Mendjan Lab’s long-term pursuit to accurately replicate human heart development in a dish and study the causes of cardiovascular disease. This ERC Advanced Grant is the twenty-fifth ERC grant awarded to a faculty member of IMBA. 

Modeling the human heart in a dish 

Organoids are three-dimensional tissue models that aim to accurately mimic the structure and function of organ compartments.. Scientists can coax stem cells to develop into different tissues in vitro, developing advanced organ-like structures to replace often unreliable cellular and animal models. Since 2015, Sasha Mendjan’s lab at IMBA has worked on developing organoids replicating the developing human heart, also known as cardioids. In 2021, the team managed to form the first chamber-like cardioid, and in 2023, the first multi-chamber cardioid, including the heart’s key compartments – left and right ventricles and atrium.  

This advanced model mimics the structure and rhythmic beating of a two-week-old fetal heart, offering fundamentally new opportunities for developmental research. For example, multi-chamber heart organoids enabled the Mendjan Lab to study how different genes drive heart development or how the different heart structures coordinate to beat in-sync – an essential step in establishing a regular heartbeat.  
 
However, current cardioid models can only mimic early-stage heart development, limiting our understanding of more advanced developmental stages and of the adult human heart. 

The next level in cardioid research 

In the newly funded project, Mendjan and his team will continue to develop more advanced cardioid models to recapitulate key processes during the advanced stages of heart morphogenesis, such as the thickening of the heart’s walls and the formation of blood vessels for coronary blood supply. The team will aim to recreate the main growth processes of the humanheart to produce a highly accurate model of the fully developed heart. 

Using advanced genomics, metabolomics, and proteomics techniques, as well as novel light-sheet microscopy technology, the team will characterize these new cardioids to the sub-cellular level, gaining unprecedented insights into each stage of heart development. Their findings could set the groundwork for understanding the molecular mechanisms of cardiovascular disease and human cardiac regenerative processes. 

“I’m very grateful to the European Research Council for supporting our research. This funding will allow us to take the next step in our journey to understand how the heart develops, and improve the visibility of our research,” says Sasha Mendjan. “I want to thank all of the people that have contributed to my team’s previous research, and the scientists that keep working hard every day with this common goal.” 

About Sasha Mendjan 

Sasha Mendjan obtained a PhD at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, in Munich, Germany, after which he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. In 2015, Mendjan joined IMBA as a Junior Group Leader. In March of 2024, Mendjan became an Assistant Professor at the Medical University of Vienna with a joint IMBA affiliation. In 2025, he was promoted to Senior Group Leader at IMBA. Mendjan is a Co-Founder of hearbeat.bio, a Vienna BioCenter spin-off company aimed at developing a cardioid drug discovery platform. 

About ERC Advanced Grants 

The European Research Council, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding mechanism for excellent frontier research. The ERC’s mission is to facilitate the highest quality of research across all fields in Europe through competitive funding. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants.  
 
ERC Advanced Grants provide long-term funding for established leading principal investigators who want to pursue a ground-breaking, high-risk project. ERC Advanced Grants provide funding of up to 2.5 million Euro for a period of five years to support personnel and research costs of the funded project.