Prof. Dr. Roland Rad
Academic Career and Research Areas
Prof Rad investigates the molecular basis of cancer evolution to advance understanding of processes such as malignant transformation, metastasis, or drug resistance. His interdisciplinary team works at the interface of structural and functional genomics, computational biology, and translational medicine. A focus is the development of genetic technologies and disease models enabling large-scale perturbation of complex biological systems. The overarching goal of his works is to harness basic research discoveries for cancer therapy.
Prof. Rad studied medicine in Budapest, Dresden and Munich and earned his doctorate at TUM. He trained clinically in internal medicine at TUM University Hospital and conducted his postdoctoral research at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge. As of 2012, he held a professorship in translational oncology at TUM and led a research group at the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg. In 2019 he was appointed to his current chair and is director of the Institute of Molecular Oncology and Functional Genomics at TUM.
Awards
- German Cancer Award (2019)
- ERC Consolidator Grant (2018)
- Emil Salzer Award for Cancer Research (2014)
- Rising Star Award of the European Gastroenterology Association (2014)
Key Publications (all publications)
Mueller S, de Andrade Krätzig N, Tschurtschentaler M, Silva MG, Thordsen C, Simon P, Saab F, Zukowska M, Trozzo R, Öllinger R, Griger J, Groß N, Kaltenbacher T, Groll T, Zaurito A, Bärthel S, Falcomatà S, Strong A, Najajreh M, Papargyriou A, Maresch R, Collins K, Sailer D, Schneeweis C, Burger C, Klement C, Reichert M, Montero JJ, Moser M, Neumann J, Vassiliou G, Cadiñanos J, Varela I, Marr C, Chesler L, Isacke C, Riedel A, Braun C, Schmidt-Supprian M, Schneider G, Lawley T, Dougan G, Steiger K, Conte N, Bradley A, Rad L, Saur D, Rad R. Large-scale disease modelling reveals core principles of tissue-specific cancer evolution. Nature 2026, in press.
Montero JJ, Trozzo R,, Sugden M, Öllinger R, Belka A, Zhigalova E, Waetzig P, Engleitner T, Schmidt-Supprian M, Saur D, Rad R. Genome-scale pan-cancer interrogation of lncRNA dependencies using CasRx. Nature Methods, 2024 Apr;21(4):584-596. doi: 10.1038/s41592-024-02190-0.
AbstractGriger J, Widholz SA, Jesinghaus M, de Andrade Krätzig N, Lange S, Engleitner T, Montero JJ, Zhigalova E, Öllinger R, Suresh V, Winkler W, Lier S, Baranov O, Trozzo R, Ben Khaled N, Chakraborty S, Yu J, Konukiewitz B, Steiger K, Pfarr N, Rajput A, Sailer D, Keller G, Schirmacher P, Röcken C, Fagerstedt KW, Mayerle J, Schmidt-Supprian M, Schneider G, Weichert W, Calado DP, Sommermann T, Klöppel G, Rajewsky K, Saur D, Rad R. „An integrated cellular and molecular model of gastric neuroendocrine cancer evolution highlights therapeutic targets“. Cancer Cell. 2023 Jul 10;41(7):1327-1344.e10.
AbstractMueller, S., Engleitner, T., Maresch, M., Zukowska, M., Lange, S., Kaltenbacher, T., Konukiewitz, B., Öllinger, R., Zwiebel, M., Strong, A., Yen H.Y., Banerjee, R., Louzada, S., Fu, B., Seidler, B., Götzfried, J., Schuck, K., Hassan, Z., Schönhuber, N., Klein, S., Veltkamp, C., Friedrich, M., Rad, L., Barenboim, M., Ziegenhain, C., Hess, J., Dovey, O., Eser, S., Parekh, S., Constantino-Casas, F., de la Rosa, F., Cadiñanos, F., Sierra, M., Fraga, M., Klöppel, G., Liu, P., Vassiliou, G., Schmid, R., Weichert, W., Steiger, K., Enard, W., Yang, F., Unger, F., Schneider, F., Varela, I., Bradley, A., Saur, D. & Rad, R. „KRAS gene dosage and evolutionary trajectories define pancreatic cancer phenotypes“. Nature 2018 Feb 1;554(7690):62-68.
AbstractRad R, Rad L, Wang W, Cadinanos J, Vassiliou G, Rice S, Campos LS, Yusa K, Banerjee R, Li MA, de la Rosa J, Strong A, Lu D, Ellis P, Conte N, Yang FT, Liu P, Bradley A. „PiggyBac transposon mutagenesis: a tool for cancer gene discovery in mice.” Science. 2010 Nov 19;330(6007):1104-7.
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