• sense clinically
  • think mechanistically
  • act interdisciplinarily
  • treat innovatively

Dr. Michela Serresi

Junior Group Leader
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (Helmholtz Association)
Robert-Rössle-Straße 10
13125 Berlin

Email: Michela.serresi(at)mdc-berlin.de

Scientific Scope

Metastasis is the most common and severe complication arising in cancer patients. A question in this field that is still very much open, is how a primary cancer cell acquires metastatic traits and what are the molecular events governing this process.

Our research activity is to identify the main drivers of metastasis and clarifying their mechanisms of action. This information would enable:

  • identifying high-risk patients, and
  • design patient-tailored therapies.

We study this topic in a mouse model for lung cancer, which is the most common cancer in the western world and death by lung cancer is often caused by metastases.

We are interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms underpinning lung cancer dissemination to distal organs. While next generation sequencing technologies allowed to better understand the genetic basis of cancer, discriminating alterations that are driving the processes of tumor evolution from passenger mutations still remains a major challenge.  Moreover, extensive sequencing efforts of evolving primary and secondary tumors indicate that cancer genomes can be extremely complex and patients’ specific. Genetic screens represent powerful tools for identifying causal genes in various hallmarks of cancer progression. To address this topic, we are exploiting in vivo CRISPR-Cas9 screening strategies with dedicated and validated lung cancer animal models.

Molecular Oncology

Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC)

Group Members

  • Sonia Kertalli, phD candidate BSIO
  • Jikke Wieriks, Erasmus student Avans University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
  • Marialucia Massaro, Erasmus student University of Trento, Italy

Selected References