Regulation of Precise DNA Repair by Nuclear Actin Polymerization: A Chance for Improving Gene Therapy?

Cord Brakebusch studied Biochemistry at the University of Hannover, Germany, and received his diploma in 1989. After carrying out his Ph.D. work on TNF receptors in the lab of David Wallach at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, he received his Ph.D. in 1993 from the University of Hannover and started a postdoc with Axel Ullrich at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich, Germany, on an extracellular matrix compound with anti-cancer properties. In 1996, he joined the group of Reinhard Fässler, where he learned how to generate and analyze mice with targeted mutations and investigated the function of b1 integrin in vivo. Together with Reinhard Fässler he moved in 1998 to the University of Lund, Sweden, where he obtained a fellowship as an assistant professor from the Swedish Medical Research Council. In 2002, he received a Heisenberg Fellowship, which allowed him to establish an independent research group focusing on the function of Rho GTPases in vivo at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich at the Department of Molecular Medicine, headed by Reinhard Fässler. In 2006, he moved to Copenhagen to become a professor at the University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Health. Since 2007, he has been in addition a group leader at BRIC.