The theme of the meeting

DNA repair and DNA damage response (DDR) are important for life. Cells in our body are constantly under assault from exogenous factors (e.g. ultraviolet light in the sunlight, ionizing background radiation, chemical carcinogens in tobacco smoke, food and environmental pollution) and endogenous agents (e.g. from DNA metabolism, metabolic aldehydes and free radicals from metabolic intermediates), and thus genomic DNA is chronically damaged. Fortunately, the cell has evolved a set of highly efficient and sophisticated DNA repair and DDR machineries that remove pre-mutagenic and pre-toxic lesions by repairing DNA damages, arresting cell cycle progression, or apoptosis induction. Errors or inefficiency in these DNA repair and response pathways can ultimately cause genome instability, which is a prominent feature of many human diseases, including chromosomal breakage disorders, ageing-related diseases and cancer, as well as premature ageing. On the other hand, cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy, adopt the DNA repair mechanisms to introduce DNA damage that is beyond repair to the tumour cells, hoping to trigger apoptosis, leading to cancer cell killing. Therefore, DNA repair and DDR research is the key to understand how human diseases, particularly cancer and ageing-related diseases, presumably also neurodegenerative diseases and chronic inflammation-related symptoms, evolve and develop. Only based on these understandings can we improve current therapies and develop novel strategies. Thus, research on DNA repair and genomic stability is one of the most fascinating and important fields in biomedical research.

With the goal to communicate recent advances in DNA repair research and in the identification of novel therapeutic targets of DNA repair factors, and to develop potential interdisciplinary collaborations, the “DGDR-Krupp 2022 Symposium on DNA Repair and Human Disease”, will be held in Jena, Germany, from 6-9^th April 2022.

The meeting provides an interactive forum to showcase excellent genome stability research. The meeting provides a great opportunity to meet old and new friends and to set up new collaborations. Young researchers will have the opportunity to interact with world-leading scientists for scientific exchanges and further to explore their scientific career.

Speakers:

Matthias Altmeyer

• University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Petra Beli

• University of Mainz and Institute of Molecular Biology gGmbH (IMB), Mainz, Germany

Alexander Bürkle

• University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

Keith W. Caldecott

• University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

David Cortez

• Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, USA

Julien Duxin

• University of Copenhagen, København, Denmark

Sherif El-Khamisy

• University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Maria Ermolaeva

• Leibniz Institute on Aging - Fritz Lipmann Institute, Jena, Germany

Marco Foiani

• FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology, Milan, Italy

Andrea Hartwig

• Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany

Thomas Hofmann

• Mainz University School of Medicine, Mainz, Germany

Karl-Peter Hopfner

• Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany

Caroline Kisker

• Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Puck Knipscheer

• Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht, Netherlands

Markus Loebrich

• TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

Brian Luke

• Institute of Molecular Biology gGmbH (IMB), Mainz, Germany

Yuichi Machida

• National Cancer Institute (NIH), Bethesda, USA

Aswin Mangerich

• University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

Katrin Paeschke

• Universitätsklinikum Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Stephanie Panier

• Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing and University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Ketan Patel

• University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Tanya Paull

• University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA

Boris Pfander

• Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany

Helmut Pospiech

• Leibniz Institute on Aging - Fritz Lipmann Institute, Jena, Germany

Kristijan Ramadan

• University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Björn Schumacher

• CECAD, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Grant Stewart

• University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Julian Stingele

• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany

Françoise Stutz

• Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland

Helle Ulrich

• Institute of Molecular Biology gGmbH (IMB), Mainz, Germany

Johannes Walter

• Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

Zhao-Qi Wang

• Leibniz Institute on Aging - Fritz Lipmann Institute, Jena, Germany

Lisa Wiesmüller

• University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany

Lee Zou

• Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, USA