Dr. Ulrike Rennefahrt

CMC project management of pre-clinical and clinical drug development

Biomarker discovery and development. Diversely-trained biologist and project manager with long-term, broad expertise in oncology, cardiology, metabolomics, molecular biology, drug discovery, and bioprocessing. Interpreting, presenting, and reporting of global biochemical data across diverse disciplines. Design of early discovery, pre-clinical, and clinical disease research. KOL relationship. Marketing/sales support.

Project Manager & Research Professional Biomarker Development • Cardiology • Oncology • Life Science • Translational Science • Diagnostics

Research Focus: Tumor biology, oncology, neuronal and metabolic diseases (diabetes type 2, liver diseases), bioprocessing, microbiology, toxicology, biomarker identification and validation, intracellular signal transduction pathways, kinases, apoptosis, molecular biology, cell biology, cell culture, biochemistry, statistics, drug target identification and validation, off-target effects, mode of action, stratification, and resistance mechanism.

Identification of a Rac-specific guanidine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) that induces the activation of Pak (p21-activated kinase). Determination of the specificity profiling of Pak kinases to identify novel Pak phosphorylation sites. Determination of the ability of novel small molecule inhibitors to inhibit Pak activity.

Teaching experience: • Supervised undergraduate and graduate students in the lab. • Trained technical assistants. • Taught lectures for student of the Faculty of Medicine and Biology (2002 - 2006; 4 hours per week): “Mechanisms of regulating apoptosis”, “Molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis in eukaryotes”, and “New results in eukaryotic signal transduction”. • Held internships for biomedical students: “Cell biology: Apoptosis”.

Ph.D. with magna cum laude Analyzing the functional and mechanistic requirement of MAP kinase JNK/SAPK in cellular transformation.

06/1997 – 06/1998: Diploma thesis Analyzing the physiological function of the kinase Kin3p in the yeast S. cerevisiae. • Performed yeast two-hybrid screen using Kin3p as bait to identify novel substrates and binding partners.