Prof Daniel ABANKWA

Daniel Abankwa is a full Professor for Cancer Cell Biology at the University of Luxembourg. He is Head of the Cancer Cell Biology and Drug Discovery group within the Department of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (DHML). In addition, he is the DHML representative of the FSTM faculty council (since 2018).

The overarching research goal of the Abankwa lab is to develop novel drug targeting strategies against the RAS pathway in cancer and developmental diseases called RASopathies. Their research focuses on understanding how RAS drives stemness, identifying novel RAS drug targets and mechanisms, and developing proof-of-concept drugs. The lab aims at applications in cancer, RASopathies and stem cell/ regenerative biology.

Prof. Abankwa successfully supervised more than 60 scientists, and his PhD students continued to excellent follow-up positions in academia and industry. His publication venues include The EMBO Journal, Nature Communications, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Communications Biology etc. Since 2020 he secured > 3 M EUR funding from the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) for international and interdisciplinary collaborations with physicists, chemists and biologists.

He is the Director of the Doctoral Programme in Systems and Molecular Biomedicine (since 2022).

He gives courses at bachelor, master and doctoral levels:

• Molecular Biology 1 and 3 in the Bachelor in Life Sciences
• General Oncology in the Bachelor of Medicine
• Protein Structure and Function in the Master in Molecular and Computational Biomedicine
• Mechanisms of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases – Lessons from Aging in the Doctoral Programme in Systems and Molecular Biomedicine

Three patents for a target in the RAS pathway.

Daniel obtained several competitive fellowships, such as the Sigrid Juselius Senior Fellowship in Finland, the Academy of Finland Research Fellowship and a fellowship for advanced researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation. He is an alumnus of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes).

After his PhD, Daniel moved as a postdoc to the EPFL in Switzerland (2002), before he started working on the oncogene RAS with Prof. John Hancock at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience of the University of Queensland (Australia) in 2006. He then became junior group leader with Prof. Kirill Alexandrov at the same institute in 2008, before starting as independent group leader and adjunct professor at the Turku Centre for Biotechnology/ Turku Bioscience Centre (Finland) in 2010.

Prof. Abankwa studied chemistry and biology at the Georg-August University Göttingen (Germany) where he obtained his chemistry degree. In 2001 he completed his PhD in molecular neurobiology on axonal regeneration research at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany).