Keynote Speaker
Prof. Alfredo Castello
Professor at University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
RNA Binding Proteins in Virus Infection
Prof. Marina Kreutz
Professor at University Hospital Regensburg, Germany
Tumor and immune cell metabolism
Marina Kreutz studied Biology and perfomed her PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof. Reinhard Andreesen at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (topic: Induction of human monocyte differentiation by Vitamin D3). She continued to work on this topic in Regensburg as a postdoc. In 1995, she moved to San Diego and worked as a research fellow at the University of California San Diego/UCSD (Prof. Dr. C. Glass). After her return to Germany, she graduated as “Privatdozent” (Habilitation) and finally became appointed as Professor for Molecular Oncology at the University Hospital Regensburg in 2012. Marina is also head of a Clinical Cooperation Group Immunometabolomics within the LIT-Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy in Regensburg. Her main interest is the interplay between tumor-and immunometabolism. Currently the group focuses on different strategies to strengthen the response to immunotherapy in patients.
Dr. Katarina Wolf
Assistant Professor at Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Cell biology (Tumor metastasis - Cell migration - Cell-matrix interaction)
Prof. Hanna Engelke
Professor at University of Graz, Austria
Pharmaceutical Cell Biology (Mechanobiology - Optogenetics - Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery)
Prof. Janos Vörös
Professor at ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Biosensors and Bioelectronics
Prof. Chase Beisel
Professor at Botnar Institute of Immune Engineering, Basel, Switzerland
RNA Synthetic Biology
Prof. Olivia Merkel
Professor at LMU Munich, Germany
Smart drug delivery systems
Olivia Merkel has been a Professor of Drug Delivery at LMU Munich since 2015, Chair since 2022, and Co-Director of the Department of Pharmacy since 2024. She is a Registered Pharmacist, received a MS (2006) and a PhD (2009) in Pharmaceutical Technology as well as numerous awards, including an ERC Starting Grant, ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant and ERC Consolidator Grant, the APV Research Award and the Carl-Wilhelm-Scheele-Award. Merkel is the co-spokesperson for the BMBF Future Cluster CNAT-M and an author of over 120 articles and book chapters. She served as NIH reviewer from 2014-2015, SNSF reviewer from 2018-2022, is an Editorial Board member for JCR, EJPB, Molecular Pharmaceutics and other journals, Associate Editor for DDTR and WIREs Nanomedicine and Nanobiotechnology, was the President of the German Controlled Release Society in 2020 and the Chair of the CRS Focus Group on Transdermal and Mucosal Delivery from 2020-2022, and currently is a scientific advisory board member of Coriolis Pharma, AMW, and Corden Pharma as well as a co-founder of RNhale. Her research focuses mainly on RNA formulation and pulmonary delivery for the treatment of a variety of lung diseases.
Keynote Talk (Oct 9th, 1.00 pm): Polyspermines for therapeutic pulmonary RNA delivery
Delivery is the major hurdle thwarting the therapeutic potential of RNA medicines. While all siRNA drugs on the market target the liver, the lung offers a variety of currently undruggable targets which could be treated with RNA therapeutics. Hence, my lab rationally designs inhalable and biocompatible nanocarriers for efficient siRNA delivery to the lung. Poly(beta-amino ester)s (Fig. 1) are biodegradable cationic polymers capable of promoting nucleic acid delivery in vitro and in vivo and can be tailormade to investigate structure–function relationships. While biomaterials are commonly synthesized in large libraries and optimized empirically via one-variable-at-a-time experimentation, we combine Design-of-Experiments (DoE) with Molecular Dynamics Simulations and Machine Learning (ML) to accelerate the discovery and optimization process of polycationic siRNA nanocarriers at reduced wet-lab resources. Sophisticated in vitro and ex vivo models of the lung are available to screen therapeutic efficacy against respiratory viral infections, against transcription factors upregulated in asthma and COPD or against mutated oncogenes in the presence of relevant biologic barriers. Our previous results highlight oleylamine-modified spermine-based poly(β-amino ester)s (PBAEs) that efficiently encapsulate siRNA into nanoparticles <100 nm for up to 95% gene silencing in vitro. PBAE-based polyspermines successfully deliver siRNA for gene silencing in 2D cultures, Transwell® air-liquid-interface cultures, and in vivo. To compare polymer backbones, polyacrylamide (PAA)-based polyspermines were synthesized and resulted in more efficient siRNA delivery and gene silencing in Transwell® air-liquid-interface cultures compared with Lipofectamine but had a much more favorable safety profile in vitro and in vivo. After intratracheal administration to mice, the PAA-based polyplexes were efficiently taken up by Type II pneumocytes and successfully evaded recognition by macrophages in the lung. Additional in vivo experiments in models of disease are currently under way. Based on our preliminary data, polyspermines seem to be very promising candidates for RNA formulation and delivery with an excellent safety profile in the lung.
Prof. Henriette Uhlenhaut
Professor at TUM & Director at Helmholtz Zentrum, Munich, Germany
Metabolic Programming - Nuclear Hormone Receptors in Health and Disease
Prof. Uhlenhaut's (*1977) research focuses on investigating gene regulatory mechanisms that mediate hormone responses. Latest genome-wide techniques are combined with preclinical models to find new therapeutic approaches for metabolic or inflammatory diseases (e.g. diabetes, asthma). Prof. Uhlenhaut studied at the Technical University of Braunschweig and at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. She received her doctorate from EMBL in Heidelberg and, after postdoctoral research at the Salk Institute in San Diego and the MDC in Berlin, came to Helmholtz Zentrum Munich as group leader. She was also professor at the Gene Center of the LMU. In 2019, Prof. Uhlenhaut was appointed professor of 'Metabolic Programming' at the TUM. Since 2021, she has also been leading the Insitute for Diabetes and Endocrinology at Helmholtz Zentrum Munich as its director.
Keynote Talk (Oct 9th, 3.30 pm): Transcriptional control of hepatic metabolism by nuclear hormone receptors
The liver is a central organ controlling carbohydrate, fat, cholesterol and protein metabolism. With the ever-rising incidence of obesity and overnutrition, the prevalence of liver diseases such as MALFD, MASH, fibrosis and liver cancer is dramatically increasing everywhere, with few drugs to combat their pathogenesis. Nuclear hormone receptors such as PPARs, FXR, LXR, GR and other steroid receptors pose promising drug targets due to their inherent ability to regulate gene expression in response to ligand binding. Nuclear receptors act as transcription factors to control essential cellular functions such as inflammation, differentiation, proliferation, metabolism and circadian rhythms. Here our latest research on genome-wide hormone receptor binding, coregulator recruitment, chromatin dynamics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics will be presented to showcase how nuclear receptors regulate homeostasis in mice and humans.
