The laboratory of Mathias Heikenwälder aims at understanding the different immune signatures of chronic inflammatory human diseases driving cancer - with the final aim to generate appropriate mouse models used for pre-clinical research and translation into the clinic. A focus of the laboratory is to understand how inflammation (induced by life-style factors or pathogens (e.g. viruses or bacteria)) drives cancer in regenerative organs (such as the liver or the gastrointestinal tract).
One particular research focus of the Mathias Heikenwälder laboratory is the elucidation of the molecular and cellular mechanisms causing fatty liver disease, subsequent inflammation, tissue damage (called metabolic dysfunction–associated steatohepatitis (MASH)) and resulting liver cancer. Life-style related factors have contributed to the fact that today liver cancer is the 4th most common cause for cancer-related death and the fastest rising cancer in the world.
