Keynote Speaker

RNA Binding Proteins in Virus Infection

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.

Cell biology (Tumor metastasis‬ - ‪Cell migration‬ - ‪Cell-matrix interaction‬)

Pharmaceutical Cell Biology (Mechanobiology - Optogenetics - Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery)

Biosensors and Bioelectronics

 RNA Synthetic Biology

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.