Andreas Behren
Scientist
Jonathan Cebon Lab Ludwig Center at Melbourne
Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
Australia
Biography
My primary research interest since moving to Australia is to understand the mechanisms responsible for the immense intra-tumoral heterogeneity witnessed in most malignancies. We and others demonstrated that a dynamic change, the switch of melanoma cells between epithelial-like and mesenchymal-like status, is likely to be of significant importance in establishing heterogeneity. This mechanism leads to changes in targetable pathways or proteins during disease progression and makes melanoma a “moving” target with multiple possibilities to develop resistance against treatments. We use extensive genomic and gene-expression profiling techniques to account for the dynamic changes observed in vitro, and I have established a protein/miRNA/gene-expression database from a unique panel of ~60 melanoma cell lines from patient samples for my investigations into the underlying molecular elicitors and signaling pathways regulating heterogeneity and plasticity.
Research Interest
Intra-tumoral heterogeneity, melanoma, cancer disease progression
Publications
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Behren, Andreas, et al. "Papillomavirus E2 protein induces expression of the matrix metalloproteinase-9 via the extracellular signal-regulated kinase/activator protein-1 signaling pathway." Cancer research 65.24 (2005): 11613-11621.
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Tsao, Simon Chang-Hao, et al. "Monitoring response to therapy in melanoma by quantifying circulating tumour DNA with droplet digital PCR for BRAF and NRAS mutations." Scientific reports 5 (2015).
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Mar, Victoria J., et al. "BRAF/NRAS wild-type melanomas have a high mutation load correlating with histologic and molecular signatures of UV damage." Clinical Cancer Research 19.17 (2013): 4589-4598.
