Dr. Stefan Düsterhöft
I worked on my PhD thesis at the Institute of Biochemistry/ University of Kiel/ Germany in the group of Prof. Joachim Groetzinger between 2011 and 2014. The goal of my project was to get a better understanding of the regulation of the membrane-bound protease ADAM17 (A Disintegrin and A Metalloproteinase 17), which is a sheddase of cell surface proteins such as EGF receptor (EGFR) ligands or cytokines and which is therefore a crucial factor in many important signalling pathways such as EGFR signalling or cytokine signalling. I mainly focused on the structural and functional characterisation of domains in the ectodomain of ADAM17.
Currently, I am working on iRhoms, which are known to be essential regulators of ADAM17. The goal of my project is to functionally and structurally characterise the iRhom homology domain (IRHD).