Affiliation: University of Sheffield

Dr. Patrick Herr is a Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield and the Weston Park Cancer Centre, Sheffield where he leads a multidisciplinary research project. The overall aim of his research is to understand fundamental processes in cancer biology and to translate those findings into clinically relevant applications. A central part of this work is to understand the mechanisms that control DNA damage, repair, nucleotide metabolism and the maintenance of nucleotide pool balance in cancer. This involves the molecular and functional characterization of novel proteins in these processes as well as the development and validation of small molecules to target these enzymes.

Dr. Herr initiated this work during his time as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Project Leader at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in Sweden where he initially worked on the link between transcription and homologous recombination-mediated DNA repair. 

His interest in cancer biology originated from his earlier work on signaling pathways that control early embryogenesis. Dr. Herr received his PhD from the University of Zürich, Switzerland for unraveling new mechanisms that control WNT signaling molecule secretion and signal transduction in Drosophila and mammalian cells. He received his Diploma in Biology from the Albert-Ludwigs University and Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, Germany for the characterization of a novel regulator of TGF-beta signaling.