Varun Venkataramani, MD, PhD

University Clinic Heidelberg

I am a neuroscientist and neuro-oncologist whose goal it is to establish neuroscience-instructed cancer therapy as novel pillar in treating brain tumors and to advance the emerging field of cancer neuroscience. I have discovered neuron-glioma synaptic contacts that can drive brain tumor growth that can also be detected in the earliest stages of brain metastases. Building on this work, I have further characterised neuronal mechanisms of brain tumor invasion. This also allowed me to characterise the role of different tumor cell states in driving invasion and therapeutic resistance. This brought together how glioblastoma‘s dissemination, the cellular as well as molecular heterogeneity are closely interlinked. My future plan is to start from basic science discoveries in vitro and in vivo to establish frameworks that will encompass the way to clinical translation and ultimately improve cancer therapy. For this purpose, I plan to combine and adapt current state-of-the-art methodologies from neuroscience and oncology developing novel approaches to study multicellular brain tumor networks. Specifically, I want to understand the spatiotemporal organization principles of tumor networks, how they reflect aberrant neurodevelopment and how they can be exploited to develop novel therapeutic strategies for intractable brain tumors. Ultimately, I want to bridge the gap between basic science and clinical translation validating these results with data from human brain tumor patients, identifying approriate biomarkers and design cancer neuroscience clinical trials.