Career

I studied Biology at the Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin, Germany and performed my PhD with Gilbert Weidinger at the Biotechnology Center in Dresden on osteoblast dedifferentiation during zebrafish caudal fin regeneration. After a short postdoc with Gilbert Weidinger, I moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford as an EMBO Long term fellow to study fracture repair in mice. In late 2017, I became a junior professor at the Center for Healthy Aging (Medical Faculty Carl Gustav Carus) and the CRTD. My lab studies mechanisms of successful bone regeneration in zebrafish and how immunosuppression by glucocorticoids impairs this process.

Expertise

Bone injury models

Intravital microscopy in zebrafish

Genetic and pharmacological modulation of gene expression

Research interests

I make use of the regenerative capabilities and excellent imaging capabilities of zebrafish to

i) investigate growth and patterning underlying successful bone regeneration,

ii) promote zebrafish as a preclinical model to characterize adverse effects of widely used anti-inflammatory steroids, and to

iii) better understand metastasis of cancer cells in bone.