Education and Training
I studied Bioinformatics at Saarland University and conducted my doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and Saarland University. My postdoctoral training at the CRG in Barcelona focused on single-cell epigenomic methods, which I continue in my current position at the DKFZ.
Expertise
I have expertise in computational epigenomics with a specific focus on DNA methylation. Additionally, understanding epigenetic (dys)regulation at the single-cell level is a strong focus on mine.
- Development and Application of computational methods for the analysis of epigenomic data
- Investigating epigenetic mechanisms of tumorigenesis and therapy resistance
- Development and Application of single-cell epigenomic methods
- Lung Cancer
- COPD
- Bianchi A, Scherer M, Zaurin R, Quililan K, Velten L, Beekman R. scTAM-seq enables targeted high-confidence analysis of DNA methylation in single cells. Genome Biol. 2022 Oct 28;23(1):229. doi: 10.1186/s13059-022-02796-7. PMID: 36307828; PMCID: PMC9615163.
- Scherer M, Nazarov PV, Toth R, Sahay S, Kaoma T, Maurer V, Vedeneev N, Plass C, Lengauer T, Walter J, Lutsik P. Reference-free deconvolution, visualization and interpretation of complex DNA methylation data using DecompPipeline, MeDeCom and FactorViz. Nat Protoc. 2020 Oct;15(10):3240-3263. doi: 10.1038/s41596-020-0369-6. Epub 2020 Sep 25. PMID: 32978601.
- Scherer M, Singh I, Braun MM, Szu-Tu C, Sanchez Sanchez P, Lindenhofer D, Jakobsen NA, Körber V, Kardorff M, Nitsch L, Kautz P, Rühle J, Bianchi A, Cozzuto L, Frömel R, Beneyto-Calabuig S, Lareau C, Satpathy AT, Beekman R, Steinmetz LM, Raffel S, Ludwig LS, Vyas P, Rodriguez-Fraticelli A, Velten L. Clonal tracing with somatic epimutations reveals dynamics of blood ageing. Nature. 2025 Jul;643(8071):478-487. doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09041-8. Epub 2025 May 21. PMID: 40399669; PMCID: PMC12240852.
Dr. Belen Otero Carrasco | Postdoctoral Researcher | ||
Sergio Manzano Sanchez | PhD Student |
Lung Research - Projects
1. Investigating the Loss of the Y chromosome in lung adenocarcinoma: Lung cancer cells of male patients often lose the Y chromosome, which is associated with poor clinical outcomes. We set out to understand the mechanisms underlying this clinical behaviour.
2. Identifying rarely overexpressed oncogenes: Cancer research often focusses on very common events, while many cases do not overexpress typical oncogenes. We wanted to identify such rare events and investigate, whether we can leverage them as novel therapeutic vulnerabilities.