Mercator Fellow Visit: Harvard University’s Dr. Natasha and Dr. Markus Frank

From December 4-7 2024, Dr. Natasha Frank and Dr. Markus Frank from Boston Children’s Hospital of Harvard University visited the CRC 1607 as Mercator Fellows. As part of their visit Dr. Natasha Frank contributed a presentation to the CRC’s Retreat on “Multipotent stem cells for treatment of corneal disease”. Their expertise will aid the progress of the CRC and in particular the progress in the stem cell research-related project A05 “The role of limbal mesenchymal stem cells in corneal (lymph)angiogenesis, inflammation and UV-induced pterygium pathogenesis”. To this end they took part in lab talks and discussion rounds with several work groups at University Hospital Cologne, including those of Dr. Maria Notara, Prof. Dr. Felix Bock, Prof. Dr. Claus Cursiefen and Prof. Dr. Björn Schumacher.

Dr. Natasha Frank is a clinical geneticist and a physician-scientist in the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System. Dr. Frank received her medical degree from the National Medical University, Kyiv, Ukraine. She subsequently completed her clinical training in Internal Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, followed by a fellowship in Medical Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Currently, she serves as an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and an Associate Member of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Genetics. Dr. Frank is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, UK, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomic, USA. Her research endeavors are focused on dissecting the relationship of multipotent stem cells residing in diverse human tissues to genetic diseases and cancer, with a particular emphasis on the relevant role of the ATP-binding cassette transporter and chemoresistance gene ABCB5.

Dr. Markus Frank is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School, Associate Physician of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a member of the Stem Cell Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and co-leader of the HSCI Skin Program. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard College and an M.D. degree from the University of Heidelberg School of Medicine, Germany. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and a fellowship in Nephrology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, followed by research training in transplant immunology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). Dr. Markus Frank’s research focusses on the hysiological and pathological roles of the P-glycoprotein family of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) multidrug resistance transporters. His laboratory cloned and characterized the third member of this human gene family, ABCB5, which marks progenitor subpopulations in human skin and cancer stem cells in human malignant melanoma.