Müge Bozlar Müge received her Bachelor’s degree from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University (Turkey) in 2019. She started her Master’s degree under the supervision of Asst. Prof. Bahar Değirmenci at İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University. During her Master’s thesis, Müge mainly focused on the characterization of fibrogenic cells and the identification of original structures in the fibrotic liver. In June 2022 she joined Florian Greten’s lab as a PhD candidate. Currently, she is investigating cancer-associated fibroblasts and their cellular interactions with other components of the tumor microenvironment of colorectal cancer.

Fatih studied biology and obtained his MSc degree in molecular biology from Uludag University (Turkey). In 2002, he started his PhD in Ulf Rapp's group at the Institute of MSZ in Würzburg. During his thesis work, he focused on the role of MAPK signaling in murine lung cancer. In 2008, he obtained his PhD degree and continued to work as postdoctoral research scientist in the same laboratory at the Max-Planck-Institute in Martinsried. In 2012, he moved to Owen Sansom's lab as a senior postdoctoral fellow to perform research on colorectal cancer at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow (UK). In December 2015, he joined the Greten lab as a staff scientist to continue working on human colorectal cancer.

Sevgi completed her Bachelor’s and Master`s degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Bogazici University (Turkey). During her master studies, she focused on novel nod like receptors. She joined the Greten Lab for her PhD in September 2022. Sevgi analyses the complex interplay between colorectal cancer cells and stromal components of the TME during therapy.

Christopher studied medicine at Würzburg University and obtained his medical degree in 2020. He also completed his MD-thesis at Würzburg University in the Department of anesthesiology. In 2021 he began working as a physician at Hannover Medical School in the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Infectious Diseases and Endocrinology with a focus on Hepatology and Gastroenterology. He joined the Greten Lab in March 2024 to focus on paracrine mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance.

Julian obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Bioinformatics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and continued on as a PhD student under Prof. Dr. Ebersberger in the group for Applied Bioinformatics in 2018 where he worked in the field of comparative genomics. During his thesis, he focused on in silico protein comparison in evolutionary studies as well as in the field of alternative splicing. He joined the Greten lab as a Bioinformatician in February 2024 to assist in computational analysis and develop pipelines for single-cell RNA-seq data integration.

I completed my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Biotechnology and Animal Physiology at University of Science (Vietnam) in 2012. During my master, I worked in Laboratory of Stem Cell Research and Application as research staff to study breast cancer on mouse model. I moved to Germany when I received the scholarship for PhD student at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology from 2012 to 2016. In 2020 I worked for a start-up company in Frankfurt, especially focusing on iPSC and cardiac-organoids. Since June, 2023, I joined the Greten lab as a technician.

Esther Engel studied Biology at the Leibniz University Hannover and received her diploma in 2007. After that she worked for several institutes, especially focusing on in vivo models. Since September 2019 she joined the Greten lab funded by the LOEWE Center Frankfurt Cancer Institute examining therapy response of rectal cancer patients.

Johanna obtained her Bachelor's degree in Biology at TU Darmstadt and then switched to Goethe University Frankfurt to continue with a Master's program in Molecular Medicine. After an internship at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, she completed her Master's with a thesis on CEA-specific chimeric antigen receptors, working in Prof. Buchholz's lab at the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut in Langen. In July 2023, she joined the Greten lab as a doctoral researcher, focusing on cell therapeutic approaches to treat colorectal cancer, continuing to work in collaboration with the Buchholz lab.

Andrea obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Turin (Italy). His main focus was the role of the microenvironment in breast cancer progression and during his internship at Uppsala University he studied Intrinsically-disordered regions (IDR) mediated protein interactions. After graduating, he moved to the University of Iceland to study the mechanism of transcriptional regulation on the single-molecule level. In October 2023 he joined Florian Greten’s lab as a PhD candidate.

Kilian studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg and received his degree in 2019. During his studies, he joined the translational surgical oncology research group of Prof. Martin Schneider at the Department of General, Visceral and Transplantation Surgery at Heidelberg University Hospital. There, he studied the role of HIF-Prolyl hydroxylases in the development of colitis-associated carcinoma. Kilian joined the Greten lab in September 2019 as a PhD candidate and is currently investigating into the role of cancer-associated fibroblasts as well as deubiquitinating enzymes in colorectal cancer.

Sara Khosraviseftejani obtained an Bachelor's degree in Medical Laboratory Science at the Shahid Sadoughi University of Yazd and graduated with a Master's degree in Medical Microbiology at the Hamedan University of Medical Science in Iran. In Munich she started as research assistant in 2021 on several projects on breast cancer and vaccine development. At the Georg-Speyer-Haus she joined the Greten group in June 2023 as technical assistant.

Lucie completed her Pharmacy studies at the University of Strasbourg, (France) graduating in 2025. In parallel, she pursued an international Master’s degree in Biomedicine at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Mainz, which she also completed in 2025. Her master thesis focused on the tumor microenvironment characterisation and tumor-immune cells interactions of prostate cancer at the IGBMC, Strasbourg, under the supervision of Dr. Metzger. In November 2025, she began her PhD at the Greten Laboratory, where she is currently investigating the tumor microenvironment in colorectal cancer.

Ahmed worked as a clinical pharmacist at the Children’s Cancer Hospital 57357 in Egypt. In 2023, he obtained his master’s degree in molecular biology, an inter-university programme among KU Leuven, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and the University of Antwerp. In 2022, he did a summer internship at the Fendt Lab for cancer metabolism. During his master’s thesis, he was involved in the development of a biosensor for the detection of hydrogen peroxide inside the cell at the Messens Lab for redox signalling. In August 2023, Ahmed joined the Greten Lab as a Ph.D. student to investigate the molecular mechanisms in the tumour microenvironment of colorectal cancer.

Dr. Marina Pešić graduated at University of Belgrade (Serbia), Faculty of Biology in 2007. During her diploma thesis she worked in Prof. Jelena Milasin’s laboratory of Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics, Institute of Biology and Human Genetics, School of Dentistry, University of Belgrade (Serbia). In 2008, she started PhD in Prof. Lars Zender’s group at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig before moving with the group to University Hospital Tübingen. During her PhD work she was applying RNAi based functional genetic and genomic approaches to study liver cancer and liver regeneration. She was involved in the development of transposon based stable shRNA technology that can be used to conduct pooled shRNA screens directly in vivo. She joined the Greten lab as a Postdoc in 2014. She is currently working on the functional identification of new modulators of metastasis in colon cancer.

Dr. Birgit Ritter studierte Biologie an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität in Jena. Im Jahr 2010 begann sie ihre Promotion im Labor von Falk Nimmerjahn an der Universität Erlangen und untersuchte die Rolle von Effektorzellen in der Antikörper-abhängigen Melanomtherapie. Nach einer weiteren Postdoc-Phase, in der sie sich mit der Antikörpertherapie bei Colitis beschäftigte, ist sie seit 2016 als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Greten-Labor tätig. Hier ist sie mit der humanen CRC-Biobank, der wissenschaftlichen Koordination und dem Schreiben von Zulassungsanträgen betraut. Seit 2018 ist sie auch Leiterin unserer Histologieabteilung.

Eva received her training as a medical technical assistant in 1999 in Würzburg and joined the Georg-Speyer-Haus in 2005.

Dr. Christoph Steup studied medicine at the University of Ulm and obtained his medical degree in 2020. During his thesis, Christoph investigated the role of Protein kinase D1 in progression and metastasis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in Prof. Dr. Thomas Seufferleins Lab in Ulm. Since 2020 he is working as a physician at the Medical Clinic 1 at the University Hospital of Goethe University in Frankfurt. Christoph joined the Greten Lab in 2023 as a Clinician Scientist. He is investigating mechanisms of resistance to immunotherapy in colorectal cancer.

Bert has obtained his master’s degree in Bio-pharmaceutical sciences in September 2020. During his studies he was involved in the synthesis and testing of an affinity based probe for the CCR2 receptor at the Leiden academic centre for drug research. Next to this he was active at Merck in Darmstadt where he was responsible for the crystallisation of proteins and automatization of this process by training and implementing an image classifier. After working in quality at Johnson and Johnson he joined Florian Greten’s lab in May 2022 as a PhD student to investigate the roles of fibroblasts in rectal cancer and their implication on current cancer therapies.