„Evading apoptosis is listed as one of the six “Hallmarks of Cancer”, yet only 30 years ago the mechanism for cell death was unknown, and there was no experimental evidence linking abnormalities in cell death to disease. Research on two protein families best known for inhibition of cell death, the Bcl-2 protein family and the Inhibitor of Apoptosis (IAP) protein family, has led to uncovering of complex regulatory and effector mechanisms that determine whether cells survive or kill themselves. Small molecules that antagonise the cell death inhibitors, such as Venetoclax, which inhibits Bcl-2, and Birinapant, which targets IAPs, are currently in human clinical trails for the treatment of malignant disease, and might also be useful in treating certain autoimmune and infectious diseases. This talk will look at some of the key steps on the pathway that has led to the development of novel targeted treatment approaches that are starting to show great promise.“ (David Vaux)

After the seminar we offer you a wine tasting by the Weingut Stefan Leber from Mainz-Hechtsheim.

If you want to meet Prof. Vaux before the seminar, please contact Prof. Rajalingam (krishna@uni-mainz) or Doreen Nothmann.

Short CV of Prof. Dr. David Vaux:

David Vaux graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1984, and after spending an intern year at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, commenced a PhD at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. His main project was to investigate the function of the putative oncogene product Bcl-2. After obtaining his PhD in 1989, he was a post-doctoral fellow in Irv Weissman’s lab at Stanford, where together with Stuart Kim he made transgenic C. elegans worms that expressed human bcl-2. He returned to Australia in 1993, and has mainly focused on the IAP family of proteins, and their antagonists, such as Smac/Diablo and HtrA2/Omi. When he is not studying molecular mechanisms of cell death, he wastes far too much time on issues of research integrity.