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Universitätsklinikum Essen
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Forschung

Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. nat. Katharina Lückerath

Professor Preclinical Theranostics

Katharina is a biomedical scientist with a focus on experimental and translational theranostics. She is interested in understanding mechanisms underlying failure of radioligand therapy, and aims at improving theranostic approaches and thus, outcomes for cancer patients. Katharina obtained her PhD at the Institute for Tumor Biology and Experimental Therapy (Georg-Speyer-Haus, Germany). She served as head of the research group Experimental Oncology in Nuclear Medicine at the University of Würzburg (Germany), and of the pre-clinical Nuclear Medicine team at the University of California Los Angeles (USA), before transferring to University Hospital Essen in March 2021.

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Dr. Verena Behnke

Postdoc

Verena is a biologist with a focus on immunology. She obtained her PhD studying microglial immunology of the eye at the University of Cologne. Since 2022 she is part of our team and focuses on modulation of the tumor microenvironment by radioligands in pancreatic cancer.

 

 

 

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Lara Breuer

Graduate student

Lara received her M. Sc. in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of Bielefeld focusing on the cytotoxicity of natural killer cells. She joined our group in 2022 as a doctoral researcher and is a member of the GRK 2762 training program, which aims at elucidating the biological principles underlying the radiosensitivity / radioresistance. She focuses on exploring a new radioimmunotherapy to target pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

 

 

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Dr. Douglas William Howard

Postdoc

Douglas obtained his PhD at the Future Industries institute, University of South Australia. His background is in medical physics, where he investigated the physico-chemical mechanisms involved in gold nanoparticle sensitisation in X-ray radiation therapy. Douglas joined the group in 2023, working on establishing new and understanding current radioligand therapies, while also learning German.

 

 

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Dr. Yalcin Kuzay

Postdoc

Yalcin is a biologist specializing in quantitative image analysis and 3D microscopy and is applying these techniques to theranostics since joining our team in 2023. He received his PhD in 2020 from the Heidelberg University on the filtration barrier of the kidney. As a postdoctoral researcher at DKFZ (NCT-Dresden), Yalcin studied esophageal cancer with the goal of accurately determining the spatial positioning of histopathology samples along the esophagus, which facilitates assessment of the extent of tumor infiltration and understanding clinical target volume (CTV) for radiotherapy.

 

 

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Jessica Pletz

State-certified biological technical assistant

Jessica completed her training as a biological technical assistant at the DZNE in Bonn in 2020. Since summer 2020 she works at the University of Essen and in 2022 joined our preclinical research Group.

 

 

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Dr. Magdalena Staniszewska

Postdoc

Magdalena obtained her M.Sc. from the Institute of Pathology, University Duisburg-Essen. In 2018, she joined our group as a doctoral researcher and member of the GRK 1739 training program in radiation sciences. In her PhD project she focused on establishing radioligand - drug combination therapies for advanced prostate cancer and continues this work as postoc.

 

 

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Jasmin Wosniack

State-certified biological technical assistant

Jasmin completed her training as a biological technical assistant in Düsseldorf in 2017. Since 2018 she works in our preclinical research group. Currently she focuses on preclinical imaging and translational oncology. In addition, she coordinates and performs PET/CT imaging for cooperation projects with internal and external research groups.

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Experimental Radiochemistry

Dr. Valeska von Kiedrowski

Postdoc

Valeska obtained her PhD from the University of Dortmund for the total synthesis and structural elucidation of complex natural products in the field of organic chemistry. During her PostDocs her research focus was expanded by the design, bioconjugation, radiolabelling and in vitro/in vivo evaluation of new radiotracers. She joined our team in 2021 and is currently working on automating the radiolabeling of liposomes. Valeska enjoys to learn from future collaborative projects.

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Justin Dubbert M.Sc.

Researcher

Justin is a chemist specialized in physical organic chemistry with interests in computational engineering. He did his PhD at the University of Duisburg-Essen, where he studied rigidly bridged oxo- and thioethers with solid and solution state emission for use in biomedical imaging. Since 2023 he is part of our team and is currently working on radiolabeled nanoreporters.

 

 

 

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Dr. Ralph Hübner

Postdoc

Ralph is a chemist with a focus on the synthesis and application of biomedically useful compounds in diagnostics and therapeutics. He is interested improving existing (radio)pharmaceuticals and labeling protocols as well as the preparation and characterization of new systems, with a particular focus on state-of-the-art bioorthogonal synthesis techniques. Ralph obtained his PhD in bioinorganic chemistry under Professor Kaim at the University of Stuttgart (Germany) and was subsequently involved in numerous projects in various scientific disciplines, most recently as a laboratory manager in Radiochemistry, Molecular Imaging and Biomedical Chemistry at UMM University Heidelberg (Germany), followed by a position in the pharmaceutical industry as a laboratory manager for quality control in a GMP-regulated environment.

 

 

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Nuclear-Cardiology

Dr. Zohreh Varasteh

Postdoc

Zohreh is a radionuclide-imaging scientist with a focus on experimental nuclear cardiology. She is interested in using nuclear imaging approaches to assess the efficacy of novel therapeutics for cardiac diseases to identify optimal therapeutic approaches to improve outcomes. Zohreh obtained her PhD at Uppsala University (Uppsala, Sweden). She worked as a research fellow at Klinikum rechts der Isar der TUM (Munich, Germany), before joining the team of preclinical nuclear medicine University Hospital Essen in March 2022.

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