New Professor for the Faculty of Medicine

Ian James Frew has been appointed as Professor for Oncogenic Signalling at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Freiburg from 22nd December 2016. He is also a member of the Cluster of Excellence BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies. When certain signalling pathways mutate, they can cause cancer, promote the growth of tumours and impact the effectiveness of treatments. Frew researches these so-called oncogenic signalling pathways to study how different combinations of genetic mutations affect the development of cancer. Frew and his research lab primarily focus on renal cell carcinoma and other kidney tumours. They also study various types of soft-tissue sarcomas, which are malignant tumours that develop for example from muscles or blood vessels. His team develops rapid and effective methods for studying the combined effects of simultaneous genetic changes in several signalling pathways. In this way, they hope to develop targeted therapies that are specifically tailored to treat certain mutations.

Ian James Frew studied molecular biology and biochemistry at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He obtained a PhD at the University of Melbourne. He then became a postdoc at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He was a SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) professor at the Institute of Physiology of the University of Zurich from 2010 to 2016. He received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council in 2010.