Clinical Research Unit 337 – PhenoTImE
Thursday, 16 January 2025

Symposium Venue:
FUNKE Event-Center,
Essen Jakob-Funke-Platz 1, 45127 Essen

Register now: Participation is free, but registration is mandatory.

Conference Flyer (Venue & Agenda)^new

We are delighted to announce two distinguished scientists who will be soon our guests.
Professor Dr. Jacques Neefjes, head of the Department of Cell and Chemical Biology at Leiden University Medical Center, will give a KFO 337 Guest Lecture titled "Moving lysosomes through the crowded cytosolic environment under control of various proteins associated with neurological disorders" on July 24, 2024, at 12:00 pm.
Additionally, we look forward to welcoming Professor Daniel Peeper, head of the Division of Molecular Oncology & Immunology at Netherlands Cancer Institute, on September 2, 2024. In a joint seminar of the KFO 337 and WTZ at 4:00 pm, Prof. Peeper will give a lecture entitled "Function-Based Genomics to Combat Immunotherapy Resistance".
Join us for these insightful sessions with leading experts in their fields!

We are pleased to announce the upcoming lecture series, 'Sex and Gender in the Life Sciences'. This series is a collaborative effort between the strategic research area 'Biomedical Sciences', represented by the Erwin L. Hahn Institute (ELH), the Center of Medical Biotechnology (ZMB), and the Essen College of Gender Research (EKfG) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) & seven DFG-funded research consortia at UDE in the field of life sciences, including our KFO 337.
The aim of the lecture series is to show perspectives on how research in the life sciences can utilize the analytical potential of the gender dimension and open up new directions.
Further information and the program flyer for this event can be found on the EKfG website at
https://www.uni-due.de/ekfg/sex-and-gender-in-the-life-sciences_2024.php#programme.

On February 26, 2024, Professor Thomas Tüting, clinical director of dermatology at the University Hospital Magdeburg, a distinguished guest at KFO 337 in Essen, delivered a superb presentation. With his talk, he particularly captivated the young scientists with the history of T-cell mediated anti-tumor responses and immunotherapies in melanoma. His insights and expertise provided valuable perspectives for advancing research in the field, leaving a lasting impression on all attendees.
 

On February 2, 2024, KFO 337, together with the Essen Skin Tumor Center, hosted the 19th Essen Patient Day for Skin Cancer. Following exciting lectures on the topics of long-term survival of tumor patients and the detection of tumor DNA in the blood, cancer patients, family members, and interested parties had the opportunity to learn about the offerings of support groups, social services, physiotherapy, and nutritional counseling at information booths. Additionally, young researchers from KFO 337 presented their research to the guests through posters in German language. They emphasized the critical role patients play as partners in clinical research. It was an impactful event, underscoring the importance of dialogue between researchers and cancer patients.
 

We are excited to announce that PhenoTImE will be participating in the organization and implementation of the “19. Essener Patiententag Hautkrebs”, scheduled for February 2, 2024.
In this event, KFO 337 young researchers will present their research through posters in German language and will be available to answer questions from cancer patients and their families regarding their studies. They will also highlight the crucial role patients play as partners in clinical research. Download Flyer here.
 

In the first week of October, the 2nd VIB Conference “Tumor Heterogeneity, Plasticity and Therapy” took place in Leuven, Belgium. Twelve PhenoTImE members participated in this conference and the young scientists used the opportunity to present their research findings during the poster sessions. Additionally, the conference served as an exceptional platform for knowledge exchange, collaboration and networking both within our PhenoTImE consortium and within the research community.

CRU 337 research coordinator Prof. Dr. Alexander Roesch led the study Interleukin 17 signaling supports clinical benefit of dual CTLA-4 and PD-1 checkpoint inhibition in melanoma, which has recently been published in Nature Cancer.
The results reveal a statistically significant correlation between IL-17A levels in melanoma and response to dual ICI therapy, thus identifying this cytokine as a new potential biomarker for pre-therapeutic therapy stratification.

On the photo: First and senior author Renáta Váraljai, PhD, and Prof. Dr. Alexander Roesch

We're delighted to announce PhenoTImE’s upcoming equal opportunity event, the “Role Models in Science” Workshop on Friday, 02.06.2023. Female and male role models are our guests and will tell about their science career, challenges, difficult circumstances and family responsibilities. The event is open to current PhD students, Geroks and Postdocs of the KFO 337. They have the opportunity to consult the experienced scientists and get tips and suggestions for their own careers.

In May 2023, KFO337 was hosting a virtual guest lecture given by Jose Maria Adrover from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Dr. Adrover shared his fascinating research findings regarding neutrophil-mediated tumor necrosis and its possible implications for therapy. We would like to thank Jose for his excellent presentation and the exciting discussion afterwards.

On 10th of November, the KFO 337 Kick-off Symposium (2nd Funding Period) took place in Essen. It was a great meeting with renowned guests (Aviv Regev, Camilla Jandus, Nicola Aceto and Henner Farin), fascinating talks and inspiring discussions! PhenoTImE team members are very happy to continue their successful collaboration in the second funding period granted by DFG. 

The International Symposium “Phenotypic Therapy and Immune Escape in Cancer (PhenoTImE)” organized by the KFO 337 took place virtually on March 4th, 2022 and provided an overview of recent research in tumor heterogeneity, plasticity, and resistance. Some top experts in the field gave great guest lectures. The goal of this symposium was not only to provide an expert overview about this fascinating research field, but also to present the work of the CRU 337 at the end of its first funding period. We are very proud that the German funding association (DFG) has granted us with the support necessary to pursue this goal.

We are proud to announce that KFO 337 scientists Zülal Cibir and Simone Stupia, who both received a poster and a presentation award at the BIOME Retreat “Cellular and Molecular Immunology/Infectious Diseases/Tumour and Signalling”.

September 2021

As every year, the most important German congress for dermato-oncologic research, the 31st German Skin Cancer Congress, took place in September 2021. Due to the still ongoing pandemic, physicians and scientists met in a hybrid format from 8th until 11th September this year. In several live streams from Hamburg or online sessions, the latest developments in skin cancer research were presented. An important focus of the congress was on advances in the combination and sequencing of immune- and targeted therapies in malignant melanoma, but also further developments in basal cell carcinoma or Merkel cell carcinoma therapy were discussed. We were also able to present our research projects in ePoster sessions with subsequent live discussions and we shared out data with interested scientists throughout Germany.

March 2021

To inform on skin care during a cancer illness, the support initiative for cancer patients at the University women's hospital (Förderinitiative Krebskranke an der Uni-Frauenklinik) organized an online Zoom meeting where Dr. Anne Zaremba from the Department of Dermatology talked about side effects to the skin and skin mucous membranes that can occur with radiation therapy and systemic treatments such as immunotherapy and chemotherapy for patients. Additionally, care advice on how to treat these side effects and tips on prevention were provided.

February 2021

With a new record of participants, the 4th Essen Translational Oncology Symposium (ETOS) was held as a virtual meeting on 18^th February. We and other scientist from Essen, Düsseldorf and Münster showed our current research in talks or discussed projects and ideas in six poster sessions in virtual poster rooms.

At the end of a full day of interesting cancer research, this year’s ETOS Trophy was awarded to our KFO_337 PhD student Vivien Ullrich. She presented her project “Discovery of disease-driving tumor subclones in glioblastoma” in a talk. Congratulations to Vivien!

January 2021

There are almost as many women as men working in our CRU PhenoTImE and our members come from all over the world. Therefore, we think that we are open-minded and unbiased. And yet the workshop „Gender in life sciences“, which PhenoTImE organized together with the Essen College of Gender Research (Essener Kolleg für Geschlechterforschung, EKfG) and in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Anke Hinney (Vice Dean for Young Researchers and Diversity), and PD Dr. Andrea Kindler-Röhrborn (head of the working group Molecular Genetic Tumor Prevention) was able to show us that this is not completely true as we all are strongly influenced, even quite unconsciously, by our socio-cultural environment. This general social phenomenon also affects us in our work as scientists. Although we know about the influence of biological sex as well as social and ethnic origin on the course of a disease, we rarely focus on these aspects in our basic biomedical research or clinical medicine. The one-day workshop not only gave us an understanding of the conceptual differences between sex and gender. It also raised our awareness of how complex this topic actually is and that we should always keep it in mind while planning our experiments instead of neglecting it as completely new and significant insights might emerge.

October 2020

On 28th of October, Matthias Kloor from Heidelberg University Hospital gave a great and very instructive talk about the Lynch syndrome which is one of the most common hereditary tumor diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. One hallmark of Lynch syndrome is a DNA mismatch repair (MMR) deficiency, leading to the accumulation of microsatellite mutations in cancer cells. Mutations of coding microsatellites in turn result in the generation of frameshift peptides. In a first trial these immunogenic neoantigens turned out to be perfect vaccine candidates as they were systemically well tolerated and consistently induced humoral and cellular immune responses in the patients (see also Clin Cancer Res. 2020 Sep 1;26(17):4503-4510). We are looking forward to the next study on this promising novel approach for treatment of MMR-deficient cancer!

July 2020

These are hard times. Many people have been thrown from their usual and busy routine to a life of reclusion and social distancing. From their office jobs with their colleagues to the brand new and lonely “home-working” with their house pets and plants. These people have been the lucky ones, and I am one of them.

But is it possible to conduct biologic scientific research from home? To answer this question, you need to know that as young scientists, we always have some data to analyse, hidden in a forgotten folder of our computer. The literature to read is endless (searching for “phenotypic plasticity” on PubMed, you get 149330 results), so that’s also not a problem. And hopefully, we could also have some new idea and finally time to design future projects and experiments. With just an internet connection, a webcam and a microphone, we were even able to take part in international meetings and to present our results to our colleagues (see the attached picture).

So, was everything fine? Not really. Because at some point, we also want to test our new hypotheses. We need to go to the lab, to do some “real” work, to get our hands dirty (just in a figurative way, we always use gloves). Luckily, this was the case. After around one month of “home-working”, we have been able to slowly come back to the lab, doing shifts, working also at the weekends and respecting all the safety rules, face mask and distancing in first and foremost. Now we can say that we are back at operating speed, and all the time spent studying and planning will bear fruit.

During this crisis, many labs paused their ongoing research to study aspects of SARS-CoV-2 to help in this way those who are suffering the most from this situation. We just have to thank them for their choice and contribution. Though, we don’t have to forget that going on with the “basic” research is also important and that we are altogether connected by the same purpose: try to help the people who are suffering.  

June 2020

Due to the Corona Pandemic, our workshop for „Patients as Research Partners“, planned for March, could unfortunately not take place. We really had been looking forward to meeting patients, patient advocates and other interested persons to discuss various topics of clinical research. We as scientists and physicians wanted to learn how the active participation of patients can improve our research and what needs and expectations cancer patients have of us.
Instead, we have now created a webinar with interesting presentations and hope that this will be the prelude to a personal meeting soon. The webinar series is constantly being expanded and is open to all – just visit our  PhenoTImE Webinar

February 2020

In February, two of us PhenoTImE young scientists took the opportunity to take part in a Good Scientific Practice Workshop organized by the Graduate Center Plus of the University Duisburg-Essen. We and other young researchers from different disciplines learned more about the local, national and international guidelines of good scientific practice and scientific misconduct. On the basis of case studies we discussed how to proper plan and perform experiments and how to collect and store data. In addition, we learned how to deal with authorships and publication ethics and who to turn to in case of an incident (an information that hopefully we will never need!).

December 2019

On 12th of December, Per Thor Straten, Director of the Centre for Cancer Immunotherapy (CCIT) and Professor at the University of Copenhagen gave a highly stimulating and comprehensive talk about the role of TAM receptors in the tumour microenvironment. These receptor tyrosine kinases are not only expressed on macrophages and T cells but also on cancer cells and are relevant for tissue repair and clearing of apototic cells. Due to their versatile features, the idea of using TAM as drug targets in cancer is obvious. However, as Professor Straten´s work shows, the development of TAM inhibitors should be carried out with caution.

Additionally, the audience learned that in mice exercise leads to an increase of immune cells infiltrating into tumours. A study starting in January 2020 will test whether doing sports is also in humans a cheap tool to improve the efficiency of immunotherapy. No matter what results will come out: physical exercise is good for your health, so go in for sports!

November 2019

On the 4th and 5th of November, the annual retreat of the Graduate School of Biomedical Science (BIOME) took place in Bonn. As first year PhD students we had the opportunity to present and discuss our PhenoTImE projects in a poster session. We got valuable feedback not only from other PhD students but also from the scientific jurors. In addition, we gained insights into exciting topics like cell plasticity in metastasis, neutrophil extracellular traps, and macrophages from the notable guest speakers PD Dr. Marc Stemmler, Prof. Dr. Arturo Zychlinsky, and Prof. Dr. Christian Pallasch.

September 2019

In September two of us attended the annual meeting of the association of dermatooncology (ADO) and the affiliated junior scientist retreat in Heidelberg and Ludwigshafen. This event was an ideal platform to present our PhenoTImE projects to an audience keen to disscuss and to exchange ideas not only with fellow junior scientists but also with experts.

The indisputable highlight of the meeting, however, was the inspiring talk by Nobelprize winner Stefan Hell about his personal experiences in science with all its ups and downs. Afterwards, a small group had the opportunity for a personal conversation with this exceptional and self-ironic scientist. His most important advice left a deep impression: Always do, what brings you joy (“Tue das, was Dir Spaß macht”).