The DFG awarded 1.25m Euro funding to Prof. Irmela Jeremias
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has awarded Reinhart Koselleck funding in the amount of 1.25 Mio. Euro to Prof. Irmela Jeremias, head of the Research Unit Apoptosis in Hematopoietic Stem Cells (AHS) at the Stem Cell Center, for her outstanding research in the field of acute myeloid leukemia. Since 2002, this funding has been given annually to just a handful of established scholars at research institutions throughout Germany. It supports particularly innovative and promising projects in all academic fields.
Acute myeloid leukemia, a common form of blood cancer, remains an often deadly disease despite significant advances in recent years. Even with the aid of modern treatment strategies, doctors are often unable to suppress the disease in the long term. The research group led by Prof. Irmela Jeremias is therefore searching for new targets to attack aggressive leukemias.
Although new therapies are urgently needed, development processes are very costly and time consuming. To date, few drugs have been successfully carried from preclinical research to clinical application. A primary goal of the project “Identifying novel targeted therapies for cancer using CRISPR/Cas9 dropout screens in PDX models in vivo” is to make this process more efficient and prioritize effective therapeutic targets. The main tool used in the project is the patient-derived mouse model for acute leukemia, which simulates the situation in patients very well. This involves taking isolated tumor cells from patients and transplanting them into mice, where they engraft and grow in the bone marrow – just as they do in humans.
These tumor cells can be modified in the laboratory, allowing scientists to conduct a wide variety of functional investigations of the cells in their natural environment. For example, they can study the roles of certain genes in the cancer cells and identify those genes that are essential for the tumor’s survival. In previous studies, the team had already demonstrated that work with genetically modified models can discover promising new tumor weaknesses in vivo that would have remained hidden in pure cell culture work. Modern screening methods allow scientists to test hundreds of genes simultaneously here.
Now the researchers aim to use these techniques to investigate in particular those weaknesses that can be attacked by existing drugs and active compounds. The efficiency of these agents will subsequently be tested in preclinical studies in mouse models. “With our translational approach, we can find new therapeutic targets for successful leukemia therapies that can be quickly translated into clinical application,” Irmela Jeremias points out.
Prof. Dr. med. Irmela Jeremias profile