Three FAU researchers receive ERC Consolidator Grants

Millions of euros in EU funding

Another success for researchers at FAU: FAU researchers receive three ERC Consolidator Grants. Prof. Dr. Gerhard Krönke and Prof. Dr. Aline Bozec, both from the Chair of Internal Medicine III, and Henry Dube, Chair of Organic Chemistry I have each received one of the coveted ERC Consolidator Grants from the European Research Council (ERC).

Investigating the onset of rheumatoid arthritis

Principal investigator Prof. Dr. Gerhard Krönke would like to use his grant to research the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis and hopefully discover new means of treatment. Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most common inflammatory autoimmune diseases in the world. It is caused by a malfunction in the body’s own immune system which leads to chronic, painful joint inflammation and joint destruction. Although there is no cure for the disease (yet), treatments are available to relieve the painful symptoms and slow progression. ‘We have to understand the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis better if we are to develop better and more innovative treatments in future,’ says Prof. Krönke. He therefore plans to use the ERC Consolidator Grant to develop and combine various new molecular analysis methods such as single cell sequencing and 3D imaging methods. The European Research Council is providing two million euros in funding for the next five years.

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Krönke has already been successful in applying for EU funding. In 2014, the ERC approved an ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million euros for a project aimed at developing new methods for investigating coordinated phagocytosis, when a cell engulfs particles, and how pathogens and dead cells in the body are processed. Dr. Gerhard Krönke, who is originally from Vienna, completed his doctoral degree at the Medical University of Vienna in 2002. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher there at the Institute of Vascular Biology. After a two-year research stay at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA, Krönke came to Universitätsklinikum Erlangen (UKER), where he initially worked as a junior physician (Assistenzarzt) at the Department of Medicine 3 – Rheumatology and Immunology. Since 2009, he has also been head of a research group at the Nikolaus Fiebiger Centre for Molecular Medicine. Since 2013, he has been a senior physician at the Department of Medicine 3 and has also held the professorship for translational immunology at FAU since 2016, as well as leading the working group in translational immunology at the Department of Medicine 3.

Long-living cells in bones and local bone diseases

Principal investigator Prof. Dr. Aline Bozec hopes that her project will provide insights into local bone metabolism, in particular how osteocyte death is regulated at a molecular level. Osteocytes are long-living cells within the bone matrix and are by far the most common cells in bones. They control mechanical load-induced bone renewal at a systemic level. ‘Not much research has been conducted into how osteocytes die and how this process affects local bone metabolism,’ says Prof. Bozec. ‘Several local bone diseases such as fractures, osteonecrosis – when bone tissue dies – and arthritis are characterised by increased numbers of osteocytes dying and local bone loss.’ With her project, she aims to characterise the connections between osteocyte death and the molecular connection between osteocyte death and the stimulation of bone-destroying cells in conjunction with local bone diseases such as fractures, osteonecrosis and arthritis. The European Research Council is providing more than two million euros for the next five years.

Aline Bozec began her academic career in 2001, when she completed her Master’s degree in biochemistry in Lyon, France. She completed her doctoral degree in 2004, also at the University of Lyon, and received an award from the French Ministry of Education and Research. After further periods of research in Vienna and Madrid, she came to FAU in 2011 as head of a junior Emmy-Noether research group, and was appointed to the professorship for osteoimmunology, established especially for her. She played a key role in setting up the Collaborative Research Centre 1181 ‘Schaltstellen zur Auflösung von Entzündung’ (switching points for resolving inflammation) and was head of a sub-project in the DFG Priority Programme ‘Osteoimmunology’. In 2016, she was awarded the Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize, worth 20,000 euros. In 2018, she completed her habilitation and has held the professorship for experimental immunotherapy since 2019.

Switch for molecular machines

Prof. Dr. Henry Dube, Chair of Organic Chemistry I, is an unusual engineer: he builds molecular machines. The challenge he faces is that if you shrink technology down to molecular size, you are left with the question of how to process information at the molecular level and operate the technology. An approach from photochemistry has proven valuable. If you shine light on a molecule it moves from state A to state B, thereby working as a ‘photoswitch’. Prof. Dube is working to build photoswitches which can be moved to not just two but a number of different positions, giving them a higher information density. This would allow molecular machines to work much more precisely and let them be used for much more complex tasks. For example, materials could be given different properties or robotics systems could execute very precise gripping movements.

How exactly does one molecule change from one state to another? In the systems investigated by Prof. Dube, minute movements take place within the molecule, for example molecule parts rotate against each other. He aims to learn how to control these movements. This would then allow him to move tiny units in a targeted manner, letting him construct molecular machines which would in turn be able to construct specific new molecules, like a little nanofactory. Materials could then be manufactured mechanically for the first time, a process which currently requires catalytic reactions. The scope of possible applications is enormous, ranging from new polymers to energy carriers. The European Research Council is providing nearly two million euros for the next five years.

Prof. Dr. Henry Dube studied chemistry at Philipps-Universität Marburg and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich. In 2008, he completed his doctoral degree at ETH Zürich in Switzerland on the topic of synthetic modules for hemoproteins. After spending three and a half years conducting research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, USA, he returned to LMU, where he became the head of an Emmy-Noether research group. In 2019, he was offered a professorship at Cologne University, but decided to accept the W3 professorship for organic chemistry at FAU instead.

Further information

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Krönke
Chair of Internal Medicine III
Phone: +49 9131 85 39379
gerhard.kroenke@uk-erlangen.de

Prof. Dr. Aline Bozec
Chair of Internal Medicine III
Phone: +49 9131 85 29002
aline.bozec@uk-erlangen.de

Prof. Dr. Henry Dube
Chair of Organic Chemistry I
Phone: +49 9131 85 65571
henry.dube@fau.de