Curriculum Vitae

• Discovery and characterization of the PCNA switch, a key replication stress response mechanism (Hoege, Pfander et al., Nature, 2002; Pfander et al., Nature 2005; Moldovan, Pfander et al, Mol Cell, 2006; Parnas et al., EMBO J, 2010; reviewed in Moldovan, Pfander and Jentsch, Cell, 2007; work which collectively has been cited more than 5000 times for which I was awarded with the Otto Hahn Medal and Otto Hahn Award (Max Planck Society)).
• Discovery of a key control mechanism for the repair of DNA breaks (DSBs), which integrates local chromatin and global cell cycle signals to regulate DSB repair pathway choice (Bantele et al., eLIFE, 2017; Bantele and Pfander, Front Molecular Biosci, 2019); this work was awarded with the 2017 Junior Scientific Publication Award to Susanne Bantele (Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry) and the 2019 Otto Hahn Medal (Max Planck Society) to Susanne Bantele; the published work was third-party funded (213,500 Euro, 3 year project grant, DFG) and laid the foundation to our participation in SFB1064 “chromatin dynamics” (441,600 Euro, 4 year project grant).
• Development of systems to induce unscheduled replication in G1 and first systematic study on the resulting replication stress (Reusswig et al., Nat Commun, 2022, 3 year DFG project grant, 374,100 Euro) and discovery of additional mechanisms of cell cycle control (Reusswig et al., Cell Reports, 2016, this work granted Karl-Uwe Reusswig a Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation PhD fellowship).
• Discovery of a new proteostasis mechanism of autophagy targeting nuclear pore complexes and nuclear content (Lee et al., Nat Cell Biol, 2020, Alegretti et al., Nature, 2020)
• Development of next generation sequencing-based methodology to differentiate whether chromatin factors bind to single- vs double-stranded DNA in vivo (Peritore et al., Mol Cell, 2021).
• Mechanistic characterization of the resolution of DSB repair intermediates (Gritenaite et al., Genes Dev 2014; Lee et al., eLIFE 2015; Princz et al., EMBO J, 2017; Bittmann et al., eLIFE, 2020; the project was a major collaborative effort involving 6 partners, coordinated by myself, all papers but Lee et al. have first and last authors from my lab).
• Revealing DNA-associated signalling mechanisms that allow quantitative DNA damage recognition and control local and global DNA damage signalling (Pfander et al., EMBO J, 2011, di Cicco et al., Sci Rep, 2017, Bantele et al., Nat Commun, 2019; work was supported by a 3-year DFG grant, 189,000 Euro)
• Co-supervisor of 6 postdocs and 7 PhD students from the lab of Stefan Jentsch - following the death of PI. My supervision allowed all co-workers to finish their projects and to successfully move on to the next career stage. All PhD students have graduated and 5 out of 6 postdocs have moved on to independent faculty positions. From this work the following research papers were published: Lademann et al., Cell Reports, 2017; Karaduman et al. Mol Cell, 2017; Paasch et al., J Biol Chem, 2018; Höpfler et al., EMBO J, 2019; Heckmann et al., Sci Rep, 2019; Lee et al., Nat Cell Biol, 2020; Alegretti et al., Nature, 2020, Wilfling et al., Mol Cell, 2020, Capella et al., J Cell Sci, 2020, Capella et al., Nat Commun, 2021).

2023 Fusion conference “Recombination Mechanisms, Lisbon, Portugal
2023 EMBL conference “The ageing genome”, Heidelberg, Germany
2023 IRB Bellinzona, Switzerland
2022 CECAD, University of Cologne, Germany
2022 University of Regensburg, Germany
2022 IBFG Symposium, Salamanca, Spain
2022 SFB1361 conference “Restore, Repurpose, Reorganize” Mainz, Germany
2022 DGDR-Krupp 2022 Symposium “DNA repair and human disease”, Jena, Germany
2021 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA, virtual
2021 Genome Damage and Stability Centre, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, virtual
2021 Center for Genomic Integrity, Institute of Basic Science (IBS), South Korea, virtual
2021 Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain, virtual
2021 Pennsylvania State University, USA, virtual
2020 EMBO workshop “Chromatin dynamics and nuclear organization in genome maintenance”, virtual
2020 German French DNA Repair Meeting, Germany, virtual
2020 BMS Symposium Max Planck Society, Germany, virtual
2020 2^nd Munich Yeast Meeting, Germany, virtual
2019 ZMBH, Heidelberg, Germany
2019 University of Würzburg, Germany
2019 University of Regensburg, Germany
2019 Jacques Monod Conference “When RNA meets chromatin, Roscoff, France
2019 University Clinic Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2019 University of Frankfurt, Germany
2019 Centre for Research in Molecular Medicine and Chronic Diseases, Santiago de Compostella, Spain
2019 Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, Madrid, Spain
2019 Technical University, Darmstadt
2019 University of Mainz, Germany
2019 IMB Mainz, Germany (first speaker of newly founded SFB1361)
2019 Keystone Symposium “DNA replication and genome integrity – from mechanism to disease”
2018 ETH, Zürich, Switzerland
2018 Graduate School “Cellular Radiation Response”, Essen, Germany
2018 15th Meeting of the German Society of DNA Repair, Karlsruhe, Germany (+chair)
2018 EMBO workshop on Chromatin dynamics and Nuclear Organization in Genome Maintenance, Illkirch, France
2018 ABCAM meeting on Mechanisms of Genetic Recombination, London, UK
2017 EACR meeting “Protecting the code”, Berlin, Germany
2017 University of Bayreuth, Germany
2017 EU-US meeting on Repair of Endogenous DNA damage, Udine, Italy
2017 German-French meeting on DNA repair, Cologne, Germany
2017 Keystone Meeting on DNA replication and recombination, Santa Fe, USA
2017 Institute of Molecular Cancer Research, Zürich University, Switzerland
2016 ABCAM meeting Chromatin, Replication & Chromosomal Stability, Copenhagen, Denmark
2016 14th Meeting of the German Society of DNA Repair, Essen, Germany (+chair)
2016 ICGEB meeting Intersection of DNA Replication & Genome Maintenance, Trieste, Italy
2016 ABCAM meeting on Mechanisms of Genetic Recombination, Alicante, Spain
2016 Leibniz Institute for Ageing Research, Jena, Germany
2016 University of Frankfurt, Germany
2016 Friedrich Miescher Institute, Basel, Switzerland
2015 2nd Meeting Structure-Specific Endonucleases in Genome Stability, Brno, Czech Republic (+chair)
2015 University Würzburg, Germany
2015 Rockefeller University, New York City, USA
2015 EMBO conference DNA replication, chromosome segregation and cell division, Egham, UK
2015 ETH, Zürich, Switzerland
2015 Genome Damage and Stability Centre, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK