Summary

PD Dr. Katja Steiger is a veterinary pathologist at TU Munich, where she co-founded and leads the Comparative Experimental Pathology (CEP) core facility at the Institute of Pathology. Her research focuses on comparative and experimental pathology with a strong emphasis on oncology, using animal models to study tumor biology, immune processes, and translational mechanisms relevant to human disease. She combines classical morphological pathology with advanced molecular methods such as immunohistochemistry, multiplex imaging, and spatial transcriptomics, and also explores applications of artificial intelligence in pathology. Beyond research, she develops and validates animal models, ensuring their relevance for biomedical studies, and provides key infrastructure through CEP, which supports hundreds of projects annually. Her work is embedded in major collaborative research centers (e.g., SFB 1371, TRR 387), bridging veterinary and human medicine to advance translational cancer research. She also co-leads the Biobanking within the DKTK BioDataHub.