Welcome to Jun.-Prof. Dr. N. Peltzer and Prof. Dr. S. A. Johnsen as new Associated PIs

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Nieves Peltzer has a strong area of expertise in TNF signaling. She is an expert in understanding how specific ubiquitination events at the interface of inflammation and cell death maintain tissue homeostasis, and how their disruption contributes to pathogenesis. Understanding this crosstalk opens new avenues for therapeutic targeting in diseases driven by chronic inflammation and cell death. This research topic will give excellent and clear synergies between different projects within the GRK.

Prof. Dr. Steven A. Johnsen and his group are investigating various transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms controlling pancreatic cancer cell phenotype and therapy responsiveness. Importantly, together with various clinical departments at the Robert Bosch Hospital (Pathology, Surgery, Gastroenterology, Oncology), they investigate and test hypotheses in primary clinical samples with the aim of providing a foundation for future clinical studies. Using multiple modern molecular biology approaches such as targeted degradation (AID, dTAG), knockdown and CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing approaches, combined with the expertise in next generation sequencing, they characterize general molecular mechanisms controlling gene regulation and uncover viable options for the clinical translation of these findings for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. Association with him enables better clinical relevance for the research results of various GRK groups.