Events

Klara Klein from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Vetmeduni in Vienna received the DOC grant from the Austrian Academy of Sciences to develop her project "Oncogenic mechanisms of mutant STAT5B in natural killer cells" over the next two years.

With the funding program "DOC", the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) supports highly qualified PhD students from different research areas. From July 1^st 2020, Klara Klein will receive the "DOC Scholarship" (in the sum of 38,000€) for her promising PhD project which addresses whether and how a mutation of the transcription factor STAT5B contributes to the malignant transformation of natural killer cells (NK). In the course of the project, supervised by Veronika Sexl, a novel mouse model will be developed that allows the STAT5B mutation to be restricted to NK cells. This will potentially clarify whether mutated STAT5B leads directly to the development of NK cell leukemia or lymphoma and whether the mutation of the transcription factor STAT5B represents a potential target for new therapies.

Iris Uras Jodl, from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Vetmeduni Vienna, was awarded the Wilhelm Türk Prize of the Austrian Society for Hematology & Medical Oncology for the best scientific work in the field of hematology. The award ceremony took place on October 12^th 2019 as part of the joint annual conference of the German, Austrian and Swiss societies for hematology and medical oncology, in Berlin.

The Wilhelm Türk Prize is primarily intended to promote young scientists and is awarded once a year for outstanding research work in the field of hematology. The award is endowed with € 5,000. This year Iris Uras was able to convince the reviewers with her article "Cdk6 coordinates Jak2 V617F mutant MPN via NFkB and apoptotic networks" published in journal Blood, under the supervision of Veronika Sexl. Uras Jodl researched the role of Cyclin-dependent kinase 6 (CDK6) in the development of myeloproliferative neoplasia (MPN) using mouse models.

Veronika Sexl, Head of the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology at Vetmeduni Vienna, and Florian Grebien, Head of the Institute for Medical Biochemistry at Vetmeduni Vienna, are working on survival rates of leukemia patients. They are financially supported by the European Research Council (ERC). They have talked about teamwork, crazy concepts and their intersections with veterinary medicine in the VETMED conversation.

The protein CDK6 is at the centre of Veronika Sexl's scientific work at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology. "Starting with this tiny molecule, we're doing broad research," explains the scientist. It has long been known that CDK6 plays a role in many cancers because it drives cell division. It is particularly present in higher amounts in the case of leukemia. "This is why many cancer researchers are working on targeting this protein in the cells by developing special inhibitors against CDK6", says Veronika Sexl. "For the first time we were able to show that CDK6 can and does much more than previously thought."

With the same general goal, but with a different research approach, Florian Grebien is also interested in developing new treatments for cancer. His focus is on the molecular mechanisms behind the development of leukemia. “Our focus is on the so-called fusion proteins”, says Florian Grebien. “They arise when chromosomes break and are incorrectly reassembled. Cancer is very often driven by these fusion proteins. If you study them functionally, you can learn a lot about what processes a cell needs to become a cancer cell”.

Both researchers and their projects are currently funded by European Research Council (ERC) grants. In 2016 Sexl received an “Advanced Grant” worth 2.5 million euros. Florian Grebien was awarded a “Starting Grant” worth 1.5 million euros in 2015.

The full interview can be found here.

As part of the 3rd International Conference on Cytokine Signaling in Cancer in Rhodes, Greece, the Travel Awards were again awarded this year. Two of the awards went to Sebastian Kollmann from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology and Anna Orlova from the Department of Functional Cancer Genomics at Vetmeduni Vienna.

In the project "STAT5A and STAT5B in Hematopoietic and Leukemic Stem Cells - Between Death and Immortality", Sebastian Kollmann addresses the question of why mutations in lymphoma and leukemia patients are mainly found in STAT5B and hardly in the related protein STAT5A. It describes an important role for STAT5B in the self-renewal of hematopoietic and leukemic stem cells and thereby contributes with basic information to understand this question.

In the study “The ERBB-STAT3 Axis Drives Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease”, Anna Orlova shows that the overactivation of ERBB receptors, and consequently also of STAT3, leads to the transferability of facial tumours among Tasmanian devils. The study also unravels that the cancer cells can be specifically targeted by drug inhibition of the ERBB receptor.

Tobias Suske is a PhD student in the group of Richard Moriggl at the Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Vetmeduni Vienna. He was honored with the Young Investigator Award at the Annual Meeting of the OeGHO & AHOP in Linz AT for his excellent talk on “The gain-of-function STAT5BN642H mutation as a driver of T-cell lymphoma and leukemia”.

The Austrian Society for Haematology and Clinical Oncology (OeGHO, www.oegho.at) and the Working Group for Haematological and Oncological Nursing (AHOP, www.ahop.at) have been awarding outstanding research of young investigators since 2010. The award is € 1.000 and is donated by Janssen Cilag Pharma GmbH.

©OeGHO

©OeGHO