Florian Muller

Florian Muller is primarily interested in mitochondrial free radical production and its relation to aging and cancer. Dr. Muller’s team proposed a novel strategy for molecular targeted therapy in cancer, exploiting vulnerabilities exposed by passenger deleted genes (“Collateral lethality”). His group presented proof-of-principal data for one example of this strategy, where glioma cells with passenger deletion of the glycolytic enzyme, ENO1 are selectively sensitive to inhibition to its redundant homologue, ENO2.

The Muller lab’s near-term career goal is to develop a small-molecule Enolase inhibitor for in vivo proof-of-principal, and ultimately, as a clinical candidate for the treatment of cancers which harbor deletions of ENO1. The secondary goal is to demonstrate the universality and expand the utility of this therapeutic strategy to other passenger deleted genes. Their tertiary goals are to use genomic deletions in cancer to gain insight into the basic biochemistry and metabolism of human cancer, as well as to utilize this knowledge for imaging purposes. With an innate curiosity and strong satisfaction from basic discovery, their outlook is strongly translational and their success will be measured by whether or not a compound is brought to the clinic.