Maria Gierisch

My scientific interest focusses on protein degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome system both in health and disease. I studied Molecular Medicine at the University Hospital Charite in Berlin, Germany, and investigated in my master dissertation how cullin-ring ligase cycles are regulated , both under steady-state conditions and during adipogenesis. I then moved to Switzerland and graduated from the Children's Hospital/ University of Zurich in Cancer Biology. During my time there, I investigated targeted protein degradation of oncogenic fusion protein in pediatric sarcoma. To further focus in more detail on mechanism of targeted proteasomal degradation, I joined the lab of Nico Dantuma here at the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Karolinska Institute to investigate mechanism and targets of proteasomal degradation within neurological diseases. 

Protein degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome system is a highly regulated process with many involved proteins. These proteins can be disease causing due to mutations or altered expression or they can be a used to investigate targeted solutions in diseases such as cancer, neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders. In my research line, I am focussing on enhanced clearance of proteins to develop new therapeutic strategies. Emerging fields are targeting driver oncogenic proteins in cancer or aggregation-prone proteins in neurological diseases. 

I am regularly supervising master and Erasmus students in both laboratory and theoretical work.