Scientific Scope

The focus of our laboratory is to characterize the factors that determine the interplay between the immune system and cancer. To understand why the immune response vastly differs between cancer patients, we work at the intersection of computational systems biology and experimental tumor immunology. We analyze large-scale human datasets to identify candidate genetic features that modulate anti-tumor immunity, and we investigate their mechanistic role using a broad toolset including animal cancer models, in-vitro co-culture systems, and cutting-edge single cell genomics approaches.

 

Most important Awards, Grants or Scientific Achievements

• 2024-2026         Thyssen Foundation Project Grant
• since 2022         Max Eder program of the German Cancer Aid
• 2018                     Helmsley Fellowship, Rockefeller University
• 2015-2017         DFG Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
• 2008 - 2011       Scholar of the German National Academic Foundation

Selected References

• Ostendorf, B.N., Patel, M.A., Bilanovic, J., Hoffmann, H.H., Carrasco, S.E., Rice, C.M. and Tavazoie, S.F. (2022) "Common human genetic variants of APOE impact murine COVID-19 mortality". Nature, 611:346–351
• Zhu, X.G., Chudnovskiy, A., Baudrier, L., Prizer, B., Liu, Y., Ostendorf, B.N., Yamaguchi, N., Arab, A., Tavora, B., Timson, R., et al. (2021) "Functional Genomics In Vivo Reveal Metabolic Dependencies of Pancreatic Cancer Cells." Cell Metabolism 33, 211-221.e6.
• Ostendorf, B.N., Bilanovic, J., Adaku, N., Tafreshian, K.N., Tavora, B., Vaughan, R.D., and Tavazoie, S.F. (2020) "Common germline variants of the human APOE gene modulate melanoma progression and survival." Nature Medicine 26, 1048–1053.
• Tavora, B., Mederer, T., Wessel, K.J., Ruffing, S., Sadjadi, M., Missmahl, M., Ostendorf, B.N., Liu, X., Kim, J.-Y., Olsen, O., et al. (2020) "Tumoural activation of TLR3–SLIT2 axis in endothelium drives metastasis." Nature 586, 299–304.
• Ostendorf, B.N., Flenner, E., Flörcken, A., and Westermann, J. (2018) "Phenotypic characterization of aberrant stem and progenitor cell populations in myelodysplastic syndromes." PLoS One 13, e0197823.