New Professor to Research Signalling Pathways

Maja Köhn is Professor for Integrative Signalling Studies at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg. She is also a member of the cluster of excellence BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies, also at the University of Freiburg. She studies phosphatases, which are enzymes that play an important role in the transmission of signals within and between cells as well as in the development of cancer. Köhn combines molecular biology, biochemistry and synthetic chemistry in her approach. In her research of phosphatases, she also focuses on their functions in order to find out more about their molecular mechanisms and to discover new therapeutic approaches. She develops chemical tools that modulate the activity of phosphatases. Protein phosphatase 1 (PP1), for example, was previously believed to be an enzyme that could not be targeted selectively with chemical compounds. Köhn and her research lab developed the first substance that specifically interacts with PP1 and activates this phosphatase in the cell. She has also launched and runs the database www.depod.org, which lists human phosphatases and their substrates (reaction partners).

Maja Köhn studied chemistry at the University of Kiel and received her PhD from the Technical University and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund in 2005. She then continued her research at Harvard University in Boston, USA. Afterwards, she became a group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. She received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council in 2014. 

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Maja Köhn
Faculty of Biology
Phone: +49 (0)761 / 203 - 67900
E-Mail: maja.koehn@bioss.uni-freiburg.de