Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2023

Treating Genetic Diseases: Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversation with Marcus Mall

Marcus Mall, Filipe Almeida

2022 Breakthrough Conversations Science Breakthrough of the Year

In this Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversation, digital participants had the chance to engage in a live conversation with Marcus Mall, Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year 2022 in the category of Life Sciences. He talked about his role as chair of the Department of Pediatric Respiratory Medicine, Immunology and Critical Care Medicine at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, his research on cystic fibrosis and genetic diseases as well as the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on his research.

The interview series provided an intimate personal atmosphere, in which high-level guests, speakers and panelists of the Falling Walls Science Summit 2022 talked about their individual research, career paths and experiences.

The Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversations are supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and Springer Nature.

Marcus Mall

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Professor Marcus Mall is chair of the Department of Pediatric Respiratory Medicine, Immunology and Critical Care Medicine at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. He is a physician-scientist and specialist in pediatric pulmonology and one of the founding directors of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL). His research focusses on cystic fibrosis, which to date remains the most common fatal hereditary lung disease worldwide, where he has made groundbreaking contributions to unraveling the underlying cause of disease and the development of the first highly effective therapy that tackles cystic fibrosis at its root cause.

Filipe Almeida

Springer Nature

Filipe studied the influence of the biomechanics of the tumor microenvironment at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, and most recently developed composite biomaterials for the delivery of anticancer drugs at NOVA University of Lisbon. Previously, at Queen Mary University of London, where he obtained his PhD in 2015, where he studied how skin cells respond to their microenvironment by using advanced microfabricated biomaterials, and developed micropatterned surfaces for high-content imaging and drug screening. Filipe’s interests span mechanobiology, biomechanics, cellular imaging, tissue engineering, nanotheranostics and cancer therapies. Filipe joined Nature Biomedical Engineering in November 2021 and he is based in Berlin.

Further Activities to have a look at