Department of General Surgery (Division of Visceral Surgery)
Position: Associate Professor
ORCID: 0000-0001-8529-1166
T +43 1 office: 40400 73744, clinical affairs: 40400 56210
michael.bergmann@meduniwien.ac.at
Keywords
Colorectal Neoplasms, Hereditary Nonpolyposis; Colorectal Surgery; Influenza Vaccines; Innate Immunity; Oncolytic Virotherapy; Telomere; Tumor Markers, Biological
Research group(s)
- Colorectal Team (Division of General Surgery)
Members: - Surgical Research Laboratories
Head: Michael Bergmann
Research Area: The task of the laboratory is to combine molecular/cellular biology and the needs posed by surgical patients. Thus, the laboratory acts at the interface between clinical medicine and basic research, promoting translational medical science.
Members: - Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Applied Diagnostics
Research Area: The focus of the institute lies on the development of non-invasive diagnostic methods linking molecular epigenetic and genetic signatures with molecular imaging biomarkers for PET and SPECT analysis. The combination of these two methods will allow for improved functional, spatial and temporal assessment of tumor load and molecular tumor characterization.
Members: - CCC Colorectal Cancer Unit
Members: - CCC Tumorimmunology
Members:
Research interests
Our group focuses on the molecular understanding of cancer. In the area of tumor immunology we investigate the induction and the consequences of immunogenic cell death. We believe that this will lead to novel concepts in immunotherapy of cancer. We intend to learn from our patients correlating immungenic parameters of the tumor microenvironment in colorectal cancer with the course of the disease. Having an expertise in genetic engineeing of influneza virus we developed the first oncolytic influenza virus and futher intend to optimze viral vectors and its production to allow clinical use. Our focus on an RNA viruses led to a specific interest on the impact of cell death inducing receptors in viral and malignant disease. Here we lately described novel regulatory aspects in toll-like receptor 3 signalling.
Our interest in virus-cancer cell interaction also led us to the discovery that retroviral like elements such as the LINE1 retrotransposons, which comprise 17% of our genome, are involved in telomere regulation. This created a novel focus of our research on the impact of telomers and cell death.
Techniques, methods & infrastructure
Standard molecular biology assays including qPCR, Western, ELISA, Nothern, Southern, cell culture, FACS. Qantitative Immunohistochemistry, Genetic engineering of influenza virus, molecular virology, CRC clinical data, CRC Tumorbank
Selected publications
- Hock, K. et al., 2017. Oncolytic influenza A virus expressing interleukin-15 decreases tumor growth in vivo. Surgery, 161(3), pp.735-746. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.surg.2016.08.045.
- Aschacher T, Wolf B, Enzmann F, Kienzl P, Messner B, Sampl S, Svoboda S, Mechtcheriakova D, Holzmann K and Bergmann M LINE-1 induces hTERT and ensures telomere maintenance in tumour cell lines. Oncogene. 2016 Jan 7;35(1):94-104.
- Weiss, R. et al., 2013. IL-24 sensitizes tumor cells to TLR3-mediated apoptosis. Cell Death and Differentiation, 20(6), pp.823-833. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/cdd.2013.15.
- Petricevic, B. et al., 2013. Trastuzumab mediates antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity and phagocytosis to the same extent in both adjuvant and metastatic HER2/neu breast cancer patients. Journal of Translational Medicine, 11(1), p.307. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1479-5876-11-307.
- Aschacher T, Sampl S, Käser L, Bernhard D, Spittler A, Holzmann K, Bergmann M. The combined use of known antiviral reverse transcriptase inhibitors AZT and DDI induce anticancer effects at low concentrations. Neoplasia. 2012 Jan;14(1):44-53