Andreas Trumpp

Professor Andreas Trumpp is Head of Stem Cells and Cancer Division at German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Managing Director at Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine (HI-STEM gGmbH) in Heidelberg, Germany.

His overarching theme is to decipher the biological function of cancer stem cells at functional level in single-cell resolution and use this knowledge to develop early clinical trials and innovative approaches to fight cancer. The results of his laboratory provide fundamental insights into: (1) molecular principles of normal stem cell dormancy, self-renewal and multipotency, (2) identification, analysis and functional characterization of malignant stem cells and their role in therapy resistance, relapse and metastasis, as well as strategies to eliminate them, (3) monitoring, expansion and functional characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) of solid tumors and translating mechanistic insights into personalized oncology.

A recent focus of his group is the function of tumor-innervating neurons. His group developed a groundbreaking technology enabling the molecular mapping and characterization of neurons innervating tumors at single cell resolution. They revealed that tumors actively cause neuronal reprogramming, creating a pro-tumorigenic microenvironment in pancreatic cancer. Notably, nerves feeding the tumor fuel its growth and suppress the immune system. This led to the discovery that clinical treatments – surgical or pharmacological denervation – can trigger tumor regression by preventing this crosstalk. His group is currently expanding this study to other cancer types and developing a cancer-nerve atlas with the aim to develop novel targeting options for hard-to-treat cancer entities by blocking neuronal innervation.