Muscle Biologist
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I am a physiologist at the senior postdoc level who is passionate about skeletal and cardiac muscle biology. I began my undergraduate studies with the goal to learn as much as possible about the regulation of muscle mass in health and disease. To this day this is what drives me. Following my BA, I had the fantastic opportunity to be trained in the planning and conduction of clinical trials by Luc van Loon in
Maastricht. We utilized stable isotope tracing to investigate nutritional interventions for their potential to improve muscle protein synthesis in elderly patients. During my PhD at the Charité in Berlin, I continued to employ these techniques when I compared different therapeutic approaches and their effect on protein turnover and substrate metabolism in neuromuscular disorders. For my subsequent
Postdoc at the University of California with Keith Baar, my goal was to dive deeper into the cellular mechanisms that control muscle plasticity. To this end, I was fortunate to learn various techniques that allowed me to manipulate the presence or absence of individual molecules and investigate their role in the control of muscle homeostasis in vitro and in vivo. This enabled us to discover novel strategies that attenuate muscle wasting in aging, with heart failure and muscular dystrophies.
To combine my previous experiences and apply them to another complex clinical problem, I have recently transitioned to Marcus
Goncalves and Lewis Cantley at Cornell University to study cancer cachexia. Cachexia is a multi-factorial disease characterized by rapid weight loss and tissue wasting. At Cornell, I am developing dietary and pharmaceutical interventions to preserve muscle- and white adipose tissue using methods that involve primary cell culture, pre-clinical animal models, and clinical trials.
We also work on furthering our understanding of tumor-host interactions and how to modulate this relationship for the design of novel strategies to treat the cancer as well as the systemic effects that eventually result in cachexia.
Nov 2021 – present Division of Endocrinology, Cornell University / Harvard University
Supervisors: Marcus Goncalves (MD/PhD), Lewis Cantley (PhD)
Design of nutritional and pharmaceutical interventions for the preservation of muscle during cachexia, sarcopenia, and starvation using an integrated approach of cell culture-, pre-clinical and clinical research models. Delineation of tumor-host interactions that drive tissue loss in cancer.
May 2018 – Nov 2021 Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, UC Davis
Examining the molecular biology of skeletal and cardiac muscle in response to ageing, congenital muscular dystrophy, exercise, and nutrition. Administrative responsibilities included independent project coordination, animal husbandry, and grant acquisition.
Oct 2014 – May 2018 Experimental and Clinical Research Center, Charité Berlin
Supervisors: Simone Spuler (MD), Stefan Kempa (PhD)
Investigating skeletal muscle metabolism in neurodegenerative disorders using GC-MS based metabolomics, stable isotope labeling, immunofluorescence imaging, classic histology and protein biochemistry.
Apr 2013 – Sep 2014 Department of Human Biology, Maastricht University
Supervisors: Luc van Loon (PhD), Benjamin Wall (PhD)
Comprehensive research on in vivo muscle protein metabolism in humans. Acquisition of ethical approval and patient recruitment. Laboratory work focused on GC-MS/IRMS analysis.
Aug 2012 – Oct 2012 Institute of Physiology, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen
Supervisors: Florian Lang (MD), Jakob Völkl (MD)
Designing projects and conducting in vitro experiments surrounding the suicidal cell death of erythrocytes, primarily using fluorescent activated cell sorting (Flow Cytometry).
2014 - 2018 PhD Biomedical Sciences, BSRT, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
2013 - 2014 MSc Biology of Human Performance and Health, Maastricht University
2011 - 2012 BSc Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, University of California Davis
2009 - 2013 BA Clinical Exercise Science, University of Potsdam
