Universitätsklinikum Aachen

Pathology department, RWTH Aachen

Dr. Dahl (PhD) has been working from 1997 to 2003 as a group leader at the oncology company metaGen, a former subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company Schering AG, Berlin (now Bayer-Schering AG, Berlin). Dr. Dahl was substantially involved in setting up the discovery and validation platform of metaGen and headed the group "Gynecological Cancers" with six coworkers. Due to his work, metaGen could establish more than 10 patent applications in the area of breast and ovarian cancer. From 2001 to 2004 Dr. Dahl was the project coordinator of the Gynaecological Cancer Consortium (GCC), a research consortium of eight leading academic groups within the German Human Genome Project. These partners included well-known scientists like Prof. Manfred Dietel (Director Pathology, Charité Berlin), Prof. Heinz Höfler (Director Pathology, Tech. University of Munich) and Prof. Otmar Wiestler (Head of the German Cancer Center, Heidelberg). From 2000 to 2004 the Gynaecological Cancer Consortium analyzed 40 novel tumor-associated genes in breast and ovarian cancer and published a variety of interesting marker (see e.g. Dahl et al., 2005).

Since 2004 Dr. Dahl is heading the Molecular Oncology Group at the Institute of Pathology, RWTH Aachen and in 2009 he became a Professor for Tumor Pathology. His focus is on the validation of novel tumor markers in solid tumors that can be used for early diagnosis of tumors and/or prediction of therapy response.

Subsequently validated markers shall be integrated into innovative new diagnostics tools like biochips to personalize and optimize future treatment of cancer patients.

Since the integration of molecular medicine and microtechnology is becoming a major research interest at the RWTH Aachen, the INTERREGIO MicroBioMed project is well centered in this important field of translational research.