Born in Lustenau, Christoph Gassner studied biology, specialising in microbiology and biochemistry, at the Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck and completed his doctorate in 1994 on the subject of “DNA methylation by the E. coli phage T1”. His civilian service then took him to the Austrian Red Cross and there to the Central Institute for Blood Transfusion at the Tyrolean Regional Hospitals, where he practised genetics and molecular diagnostics of tissue and blood groups until 1999. In 1999 and 2000 he spent research stays at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, US and at the Basel Institute for Immunology. There he deepened his knowledge in the field of immunogenetics. Back in Austria and inspired by the one-year extra-occupational course “Innovation, Product and Process Management”, the first commercial genetic diagnostic kits for various blood group characteristics were developed (worldwide). In 2005, Christoph Gassner habilitated as a private lecturer in medical biology with the topic “Genetic diagnostics of blood group RhD” and thus obtained formal teaching authorization at the Medical University of Innsbruck. From 2010, he developed a MALDI-TOF-based high-throughput system for genetic blood grouping at the Zurich Blood Donor Centre with his team and used it to test more than 80,000 Swiss blood donors.

Christoph has been a formal trainer of the German Society for Immunogenetics (DGI) since 2007 and Chairman of the Blood Group Terminology Working Group of the International Society for Transfusion Medicine (ISBT) since 2018. His research interests focus on the plasma membrane of red blood cells, their blood groups and - at the genetic level - the diverse immunological reactions they trigger.

• 2023_Posterpräsentation/Liechtenstein
• NZZ_Blutgruppen_AdrianRitter_20240817.pdf