Young researcher receives 1.3 million euros for cancer research
Dr. Anna Junker, a medical chemist, has already been researching on her own in Münster as a postdoc, working on pharmacological agents for the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. Now, thanks to her outstanding research work, she is taking the next step in her career. Through its Emmy Noether Programme, the German Research Foundation (DFG) is providing junior researcher Anna Junker with 1.3 million euros of funding in the next five years. The financial assistance will enable her to put together her research group at the European Institute of Molecular Imaging (EIMI) at the University of Münster.
The 35-year-old medical chemist already impressed the experts at the Cells-in-Motion (CiM) Cluster of Excellence two years ago, when, as a CiM postdoc, she obtained third-party funding for the first research project of her own. “The DFG funding now gives me not only more freedom for research but also the security to be able to concentrate exclusively on my research in the next five years,” says Anna Junker. “Also, I can now provide PhD positions, pursue more complex approaches and demonstrate the creativity and quality of my scientific work.” Having her own research group is an enormous step towards a professorship, she says.
Anna Junker made a conscious decision to stay at Münster University and work at EIMI. “Nowhere else is there so much interdisciplinary research being done in the field of imaging,” she says. “What I really like is exchanging ideas with physicists, computer scientists, physicians, and biologists.”
With her own junior research group, Anna Junker now wants to develop pharmacological agents and so-called imaging probes for research and the treatment of breast cancer and inflammatory diseases. Anna Junker has her eye on two receptors – P2X7R and P2X4R. The two receptors are proteins and components of the cell surface and transmit signals from the outside to the inside of the cell. These are seen as promising approaches for treating cancer and inflammatory diseases.
Anna Junker aims to develop new types of so-called agonists and antagonists. These substances occupy the receptors and activate or block the signal transduction. Such agonists and antagonists can be used as markers in diagnostics, as well as in the treatment. Radiopharmaceuticals are examples of such markers, and they are injected in tiny amounts for diagnostic purposes into patients or model organisms such as mice. They bind to the desired receptors, thus making them visible. As a result, molecular processes can be followed using a variety of imaging methods such as positron emission tomography (PET), fluorescence imaging and photoacoustic tomography. The results enable researchers to understand better how diseases arise and how pathologic processes might be stopped.
With its Emmy Noether Programme, the DFG aims to provide opportunities for junior researchers to undertake independent research. Anna Junker now has five years to build up her own research group, have the responsibility of leading it and qualify herself for a professor.
Personal details:
After studying pharmacy at the University of Münster and then gaining her license as a pharmacist, Anna Junker did her PhD at the Institute of Pharmaceutical and Medical Chemistry in Münster and at the Nagoya University in Japan. After that, she went as a postdoc to the University of Bonn and then, with a DFG research scholarship, to the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the USA. She has been working in Münster again for two years now and, as a CiM postdoc is studying cell surface receptors involved in the metastasis of prostate cancer.