News

28.02.2025

Happy Birthday - The lab turns 1 year old!

Today we had a double reason to celebrate.

Firstly, we celebrated the lab's first birthday.

At the same time, our PhD students Sharduli and Berkay presented today their projects for the first time in our institute seminar. Both did a great job, successfully presenting their research and our achievements over the last months.

To celebrate the day and reward ourselves for our work, we enjoyed some themed cake.

07.01.2025

Welcome Lili, our new PhD student in the Funk Lab!

At the start of the new year, Lili joins the Funk Lab as a new PhD student. Lili completed her Bachelor´s and Master´s in Pharmaceutical Sciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich in 2024. She developed an interest in organoids during her time as a Student Research Assistant at the Department of Pharmacology (LMU) while working with human retinal organoids for the evaluation of gene therapy approaches. In the last year of her studies, she did an ERASMUS exchange year at Uppsala University in Sweden while focusing on type 1 diabetes and organoids. For her Master´s thesis, she worked with lentiviral lineage tracing to investigate the occurrence of transdifferentiation in human islets of Langerhans. As a doctoral candidate at the Funk Lab, she aims to develop an organoid-based cell therapy for COPD.

06.12.2024

ERJ Editorial by Maja and colleagues on the ‘Bronchiod’ model by Maurat et al., 2024

Maja wrote an editorial together with her colleagues Mareike Lehmann & Janna Nawroth to highlight the article ‘A novel in vitro tubular model to recapitulate features of distal airways: the bronchioid’ (Maurat Elise et al., 2024) recently published in the Journal of the European Respiratory Society (ERJ).

This novel ‘bronchioid’ model developed by the team around Isabelle Dupin combines specific advantages of current models, incl. ALI cultures, 3D organoid cultures, and Lung-on-Chip. At the same time, it mimics human distal airway 3D structure and cellular composition, greatly improving and expanding our experimental toolbox for research on chronic 🫁 diseases, such as COPD.

Link to the editorial article ‘A breath of the future: a novel human model for COPD and beyond’

02.09.2024

Welcome Tobias, our first Biology Lab Assistant Trainee in the Funk Lab!

As our first Biology Lab Assistant Trainee, Tobias joined us on 02.09.24. Tobias completed his Abitur in 2019 and then studied Beverage Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). During this time, he gained valuable work experience, which deepened his interest in biology and laboratory work. Currently, Tobias is in their third year of training as a biological laboratory technician, where he continues to build on the skills and knowledge acquired during his studies and work at TUM. He will support & help out the team, including lab work such as lung histology and cell culture maintenance.

07.06.2024

Funk Lab at the DZL Annual Meeting in Bad Nauheim

From 05.-07.06.2024, the DZL Annual Meeting took place in idyllic Bad Nauheim, organized by the UGMLC (The Universities of Giessen and Marburg Lung Center). We, Maja, Sharduli and Berkay attended the meeting all-together and immersed ourselves over three days in the latest findings on lung health and disease. After the meeting, we shared our highlights and gathered new ideas and suggestions for our projects.

01.05.2024

Welcome Berkay, our new PhD student in the Funk Lab!

As the 2nd PhD student, Berkay joined the Funk Lab on 01.05.2024. Berkay has completed his Bachelor’s in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Bilkent University, Turkey in 2021. He started to focus on stem cell research during his internships and continued his education in Developmental and Stem Cell Master’s at Heidelberg University. There, he had experience with various model organisms and cell types. For his MSc thesis, he has worked with lactating mammary-derived organoids to mimic the mammary glands’ development and assessed the effects of polyploidization on the organoids at DKFZ. In the context of his PhD work, he aims to uncover the molecular mechanisms of age related changes in lung tissue, while enhancing the lung organoid systems by establishing co-cultures and introducing environmental stressors to the culture.

15.04.2024

Welcome Sharduli, the first PhD student of the Funk Lab!

On 15.04.2024 Sharduli has joined the Funk Lab as the first PhD student. Sharduli is originally from Kurukshetra, India. She graduated with a B.Tech. in Biotechnology from Kurukshetra University, India, in 2021. Following her undergraduate studies, she came to Munich to pursue her Master’s in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. Sharduli developed a keen interest in 3D cellular models during her Master’s internship while working with spheroids of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. In her MSc thesis, she focused on studying the interaction of different mediators of NF-κB signaling in T lymphocytes. In the context of her PhD studies, she aims to study the molecular mechanisms of environmental stress and ageing–induced loss of airway epithelial barrier function in COPD using 3D lung organoids. Her research aims to identify age-related changes, for example at the epigenetic level, that promote inflammation in COPD and slow down the regenerative capacity of epithelial stem cells by targeting them using drug screening approaches.

21.02.2024

Maja gave an interview on her new role and goals as Junior Research Group Leader, the research of the lab and her personal take on what it means to be a scientist.

Here is a short snippet from the full interview:

"Although the human desire to live forever is very old, the field of ageing research at the molecular level is still relatively young. I find this fascinating, and it also means that there is still a lot of potential for far-reaching discoveries that could have an impact on our society."

01.02.2024

The Funk Lab has now officially opened and we are looking forward to kicking things off in the lab very soon!

Please reach out if you are interested in our research and potential collaborations.

We can now also be found virtually in our new home on the website of the Institute of Lung Health and Immunity (LHI), Helmholtz Munich.

18.12.2023

Maja’s postdoctoral work on age-related chronic inflammation (inflammaging) in the intestine and the role of intestinal stem cells in this process was published in DevCell.

Aged intestinal stem cells propagate cell-intrinsic sources of inflammaging in mice.

We identify at the single-cell level that intestinal inflammaging establishes differently along the crypt-villus axis and that aged ISCs upregulate MHC-II for CD4+ T cell interaction via IFNg-STAT1 signaling.

Moreover, epithelial cells acquire in vivo age-specific changes in chromatin accessibility that are maintained ex vivo in organoid cultures and associated with inflammation-associated loci, promoting stem cell-intrinsic sources of inflammaging.

16.11.2023

We are looking for Ph.D. students to join the lab in Spring 2024:

The Ph.D. projects will aim to investigate the links between ageing and environmental stress in chronic inflammatory lung disease, focusing on COPD. The projects will include working with 3D lung organoid cultures. Positions are filled.

03.07.2023

From 2.-7.7.2023, the Biology of Aging Gordon Research Conference with the topic “Evolving Concepts of Organismal Aging” took place in Castelldefels, Barcelona. The conference provided a great environment to generate and discuss new ideas & concepts across a broad spectrum of ageing research.

Maja presented her postdoctoral work with a talk, titled “Aged intestinal stem cells acquire and propagate cell-intrinsic sources of inflammaging”.

As a highlight, the presentation was artfully illustrated by Alex Cagan (alexcagan.com)