Frankfurt/Mainz

The DKTK-site Frankfurt /Mainz draws its approach to Cancer Medicine from collaborations between research teams spanning from Structural Biology and Medicinal Chemistry to Clinical Medicine, who in the past significantly contributed to Molecularly Targeted Therapies (Frankfurt) and Immunotherapy (Mainz).

The Scientists and Clinicians of the DKTK partner-site Frankfurt/Mainz strive to improve their ability to discover mechanisms of disease (exploitation of oncogenic mechanisms), discover ways how to identify the importance of these mechanisms in individual patients (molecular diagnostics) to therapeutically interfere with these mechanisms (drug discovery and development, molecular therapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy), and perform clinical trials that validate novel diagnostics and therapeutics at all levels of clinical research (CCP).

It is our goal, that the Frankfurt/Mainz site will continue to significantly contribute and help coordinate diverse programs and platforms of the DKTK. Hence, the DKTK Frankfurt/Mainz strategically recruited several professorships and junior group leaders into the local structures along the translational path to “Turn Molecular Information into novel Cancer Therapies”. Henner Farin joined the Georg Speyer Haus - Institute for Tumor Biology and Experimental Therapy (GSH) as a DKTK junior group leader working on “Microenvironmental signaling crosstalk in colon cancer. The DKTK young investigator group in Mainz, Dr. Guezguez's group, is researching the mechanisms of stem cell self-renewal in the so-called hematopoietic niche in the bone marrow and ways in which cancer cells take advantage of these mechanisms. The goal of deciphering these mechanisms is to develop new ways of immunotherapeutic cancer treatments.

With a strong focus on Proteomics, we set up a Mass spec unit allowing the analysis of thousands of (phospho-) peptides from FFPE material. A drug discovery platform has been implemented by including existing structures (Magnetic resonance center, crystallography, structural modeling, alpha screens) into demonstrator projects. Moreover, a Mouse Imaging and Histology Unit is located at the GSH which is partly equipped by DKTK funds.

Within the Clinical Research Unit, at both sites (Frankfurt and Mainz), an early clinical trial unit is jointly run by the respective UCTs and the DKTK. Both DKTK Hospitals run a data base (CentraXX) that unifies patient and biomaterial data. Since Frankfurt is seat of the CCP Coordinator, it provides a blueprint and experimentation grounds for CCP structures and services.