Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Björn Schumacher

CRC 1607 | Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Björn Schumacher

Institut für Genomstabilität in Alterung und Erkrankung (IGSAD), Medizinische Fakultät, CECAD Research Center
University of Cologne
Joseph-Stelzmann-Str. 26
50931 Cologne, Germany
+49 (0) 221 478 84202
bjoern.schumacher@uni-koeln.de

Projects:

Project leader

A05

Scientific career

2013-date Full Professor (W3) and Director, IGSAD, University of Cologne

2023-date Associate editor, Mechanisms in Aging and Development

2019 – date Co-Director, Minerva Center of the Biological Mechanisms of Healthy Ageing, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

2019 – date Executive Board member the Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health (CERES)

2016 – date Vice-President of the German Society for DNA Repair (DGDR)

2014 – 2020 President of the German Society for Aging Research (DGfA)

2014 – 2016 Acting Director of the CECAD Research Center, University of Cologne

2012 – date Executive Board member of the Excellence Cluster CECAD

2009 – 2013 Independent junior research group leader in the Cologne Excellence Cluster CECAD, University of Cologne, Germany

2005 EMBO long-term and Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships

2004-2008 Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Jan Hoeijmakers, Department of Genetics, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Prizes and honors

2019 Eva Luise Köhler Forschungspreis für Seltene Erkrankungen

2011 European Research Council (ERC) Starting Independent Researcher Grant

2009 Innovation Prize of the State of North-Rhine Westphalia

Selected publications

  1. Wang S, Meyer DH, Schumacher B. Inheritance of paternal DNA damage by histone-mediated repair restriction. Nature. 613, 365–374 (2023).
  2. Soltanmohammadi N, Wang S, Schumacher B. Somatic PMK-1/p38 signaling links environmental stress to germ cell apoptosis and heritable euploidy. Nat Commun. 2022 Feb 4;13(1):701.
  3. Schumacher B, Pothof J, Vijg J, Hoeijmakers JHJ. The central role of DNA damage in the ageing process. Nature. 2021 Apr;592(7856):695-703.
  4. Meyer DH, Schumacher B. BiT age: A transcriptome-based aging clock near the theoretical limit of accuracy. Aging Cell. 2021 Mar 3; 20(3):e13320. doi: 10.1111/acel.13320. Epub 2021 Mar 3.
  5. Wang S, Meyer DH, Schumacher, B. H3K4me2 regulates the recovery of protein biosynthesis and homeostasis following DNA damage. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2020 Dec;27(12):1165-1177.
  6. Ou HL, Kim CS, Uszkoreit S, Wickström SA, Schumacher B. Somatic niche cells regulate the CEP-1/p53-mediated DNA damage response in primordial germ cells. Dev Cell. 2019 Jul 22;50(2):167-183.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2019.06.012
  7. Bianco J, Schumacher B. MPK-1/ERK pathway regulates DNA damage response during development through DAF-16/FOXO. Nucleic Acids Res. 2018 Jul 6;46(12):6129-6139. doi: 10.1093/nar/gky404
  8. Ackermann L, Schell M, Pokrzywa W, Kevei É, Gartner A, Schumacher B#, Hoppe T#. E4 ligase-specific ubiquitination hubs coordinate DNA double-strand-break repair and apoptosis. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2016 Nov;23(11):995-1002. (#co-corresponding authors)
  9. Mueller M, Castells-Roca L, Babu V, Ermolaeva MA, Müller RU, Frommolt P, Williams AB, Greiss S, Schneider JI, Benzing T, Schermer B, Schumacher B. DAF-16/FoxO and EGL-27/GATA promote developmental growth in response to persistent somatic DNA damage. Nat Cell Biol. 2014 Nov 24:16(12):1168–1179
  10. Ermolaeva MA, Segref A, Dakhovnik A, Ou HL, Schneider JI, Utermöhlen O, Hoppe T, Schumacher B. DNA damage in germ cells induces an innate immune response that triggers systemic stress resistance. Nature. 2013 Sep 19;501(7467):416-20