Affiliation: St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute

Martin Distel is group leader of the Innovative Cancer Models research group at St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute, Vienna, Austria. He is also head of the recently established Zebrafish platform Austria for preclinical drug screening (ZANDR) (www.zandr-ccri.at). 

He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Molecular Biotechnology from the Technical University Munich, Germany. During his PhD, he developed genetic tools and protocols to follow hindbrain development in the living zebrafish embryo in the laboratory of Prof. Reinhard Köster at the Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany. For his postdoctoral studies, he joined the laboratory of Prof. David Traver at the University of California, San Diego, USA.  

His current research interests are cancer modeling in zebrafish, applying optogenetic and photopharmaceutical tools for cancer research in zebrafish and drug screening in zebrafish disease models.