Bone metastasis of prostate cancer indicates that, unfortunately, the disease will most likely not be eradicated: while different clinical options are available to address bone-related symptoms, a definitive cure for bone-metastatic prostate cancer is still missing. My research projects develop from this background and are directed towards the generation of versatile in vitro models to study the interactions of cancer cells with bone cells and cells of the immune system.

The elucidation of molecular mechanisms goes side by side with the implementation of patient-derived material into translational assays and state of the art animal models. The former helps to address the basis of drug resistance and clonal selection of cancerous cells, the latter aims at generating reliable models of therapy response prediction.

My actual research focuses are prostate cancer metabolism and its link with therapy resistance, the development of bone colonization models and the contribution of Cripto and GRP78 to prostate cancer progression.