Markus Müschen, MD, PhD

Since 2009, the Müschen laboratory has established new conceptual frameworks for the understanding of B-cell signaling and energy metabolism and how defects in these mechanisms contribute to autoimmunity and B-cell transformation. Influenced by his postdoctoral training in basic immunology (Klaus Rajewsky and Ralf Küppers) and cancer genetics (Janet D. Rowley), Dr. Müschen is particularly interested in signal transduction pathways that change the clinical trajectory of human B-cell malignancies and B-cell driven autoimmune diseases. To generate hypotheses and for target discovery, his laboratory builds on clinical outcome predictors: in collaboration with multiple study teams across the US, his group developed and validated phenotypic biomarkers of favorable and poor clinical outcomes in B-cell malignancies and integrated these markers into models of oncogenic signaling pathways. As PI of the NCI CTEP ‘Human hematopoiesis and leukemia PDX’ program, his laboratory developed PDX resources to model B-cell malignancies based on patient-derived cells and cord blood-based humanized mouse models to study mechanisms of human B-lymphopoiesis in vivo.

In 2010, Dr. Müschen joined the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) as full professor with tenure and served as Program Leader of the Hematological Malignancies Program at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is currently a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Faculty Scholar and supported by an NCI Outstanding Investigator Award (R35). The Müschen laboratory consists of 18 trainees and staff. So far, 16 of his former trainees have become tenured or tenure-track faculty in academic research at institutions including UCSF, Imperial College, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, WEHI, TU Munich, SIBS Shanghai, Penn State and University of Cologne. At Yale University, Dr. Müschen serves as Director of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology and as a mentor for six junior faculty.