PROJECT
SUPERVISORS
Project Supervisor
Nina Cabezas-Wallscheid
Background
I studied Biotechnology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) and the University of Parma (Italy) before moving to Germany to pursue my PhD at the Medical Center of Mainz. During my doctoral work, I investigated the evolution of transcriptional landscapes and the emergence of cancer stem cell hierarchies in a subtype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML1-ETO).
After earning my PhD, I joined the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg for postdoctoral training, where I focused on deciphering regulatory networks in adult hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and multipotent progenitors, as well as the mechanisms that maintain HSC dormancy. In 2017, I established my independent research group at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, securing major international funding, including an ERC Starting Grant and later an ERC Consolidator Grant, and was selected for the EMBO Young Investigator Programme. Since 2024, I have been a Full Professor at ETH Zürich (Switzerland).
My lab investigates how HSC dormancy and activation are regulated, how metabolic states and dietary factors influence stem cell health and aging, and how age-related changes contribute to diseases such as leukemia, clonal hematopoiesis, and potentially myocardial infarction.
To drive discovery, we develop and apply cutting-edge methodologies including single-cell multi-omics, metabolic and lipidomic profiling, and computational modeling. Our workflow integrates systemic dietary interventions, phenotypic and functional analysis of the hematopoietic system, and low-input multi-omics techniques such as ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq, metabolomics, and RNA-seq to map regulatory networks. We gain mechanistic insights through gain- and loss-of-function approaches, such as knock-out, knock-down, overexpression, and rescue experiments. We also translate our findings to the human setting using primary patient material, AI-based epidemiological studies, and by initiating clinical trials to identify new therapeutic strategies for age-associated blood disorders.
Publications
Lalioti ME, Romero-Mulero MC, Karabacz N, Mess J, Demollin H, Rettkowski J, Schuldes K, Mitterer M, Wadle C, Shoumariyeh K, Egg M, Alfonso-Gonzalez C, Jäcklein K, Schönberger K, Karantzelis N, Reisig G, Aktories P, Mayer IM, Tsoukala I, Schäffer A, Tirado-Gonzalez I, Dugourd A, Braun LM, Silva-Rego B, Jones MJ, Kierdorf K, Saez-Rodriguez J, Reising K, Walter SG, Medyouf H, Hilgers V, Ghiaur G, Zeiser R, Karpova D, Renders S, Gravius S, Buescher J, Cabezas-Wallscheid N (2025). Differentiation, ageing and leukaemia alter the metabolic profile of human bone marrow haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. Nature Cell Biology, 27(8):1367-1380.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-025-01709-7
Rettkowski J, Romero-Mulero MC, Singh I, Wadle C, Wrobel J, Chiang D, Hoppe N, Mess J, Schönberger K, Lalioti ME, Jäcklein K, SilvaRego B, Bühler T, Karabacz N, Egg M, Demollin H, Obier N, Zhang YW, Jülicher C, Hetkamp A, Czerny M, Jones MJ, Seung H, Jain R, von Zur Mühlen C, Maier A, Lother A, Hilgendorf I, van Galen P, Kreso A, Westermann D, Rodriguez-Fraticelli AE, Heidt T, Cabezas-Wallscheid N (2025). Modulation of bone marrow haematopoietic stem cell activity as a therapeutic strategy after myocardial infarction: a preclinical study. Nature Cell Biology, 27(4):591-604.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-025-01639-4
Schönberger K, Obier N, Romero-Mulero MC, Cauchy P, Mess J, Pavlovich P, Zhang YW, Mitterer M, Jablanovic J, Rettkowski J, Jäcklein K, Curtis JD, Büscher J, Pearce EL, Cabezas-Wallscheid N (2022). Multilayer omics analysis reveals a non-classical signaling axis to regulate stem cell identity. Cell Stem Cell, 29(1):131-148.e10.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2021.10.002
Zhang YW, Mess J, Aizarani N, Mishra P, Johnson C, Romero-Mulero MC, Rettkowski J, Schönberger K, Obier N, Jäcklein K, Woessner NM, Lalioti ME, Velasco-Hernandez T, Sikora K, Wäsch R, Lehnertz B, Sauvageau G, Manke T, Menendez P, Walter SG, Minguet S, Laurenti E, Günther S, Grün D, Cabezas-Wallscheid N (2022). Hyaluronic acid–GPRC5C signalling promotes dormancy in hematopoietic stem cells. Nature Cell Biology, 24(7):1038-1048.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-022-00931-x
Sommerkamp P, Romero-Mulero MC, Narr A, Ladel L, Hustin L, Schönberger K, Renders S, Altamura S, Zeisberger P, Jäcklein K, Klimmeck D, Rodriguez-Fraticelli A, Camargo FD, Perié L, Trumpp A§, Cabezas-Wallscheid N§ (2021). Mouse multipotent progenitor 5 cells are located at the interphase between hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. Blood, 137(23):3218-3224.
https://doi.org/10.1182/blood.2020007876