Research Interests (click images for examples of research results)
Current research interests focus on inflammation, thrombosis and cancer. Signal transduction pathways of inflammation are studied with special focus on the NF-kappa B signaling, as well as interconnections with other signaling processes in vascular biology and cancer .  

Signal transduction networks are studied with a variety of experimental systems, such as cell culture of primary and transformed cells or transgene mouse models using organ-specific, inducible Cre recombinase approaches. Transfection and viral transduction strategies are applied to achieve either ectopic expression or gene suppression of effector molecules followed by analyzing a variety of biological readouts such as cell proliferation, apoptosis or activation of cells.

Moreover, we investigate the dynamics of signaling molecules (for instance nucleocytoplasmic shuttling) in living cells using fluorescent protein chimeras and various high-end laser scanning microscopy techniques (such as fluorescence loss in photobleaching, FLIP, or fluorescence recovery after photobleaching, FRAP).  

Interactions between proteins are studied by fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) microscopy and verified with classical biochemical methods such as co-immunoprecipitation. 

Spectral imaging is used to differentiate between overlapping fluorophores

Besides these analyses of experimental models, we also investigate patient tissue samples using tissue arrays and novel methods of quantitative tissue cytometry to study correlations between candidate effector molecules in cancer development.  

We establish transgenic mouse systems for the study of inflammation and cancer. Pro-malignant factors are combined with molecules of inflammatory reactions in a cooperative manner using organ-specific, inducible Cre recombinase approaches.