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02/13/2025 16:07

Maik Pietzner receives professorship for “Health Data Modeling”

Konstanze Pflüger, Katharina Kalhoff, Dr. Sophie Elschner Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Berlin Institute of Health in der Charité (BIH)

Dr. Maik Pietzner receives a W2 professorship for life for “Health Data Modeling” at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH). His aim is to find disease-specific small changes in genes and thus target structures for innovative drugs. Using machine learning (ML) to mine huge amounts of heterogenous data sources, he wants to identify new therapeutic approaches for many common diseases for which there is still a lack of effective and safe drugs. Dr. Maik Pietzner has been at the BIH since 2021 and has worked with Prof. Claudia Langenberg in the Computational Medicine group. In 2023, the European Research Council awarded him an ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million Euros over five years.

Natural variations in our genetic code explain individual differences in susceptibility to disease. Only a few of these have major effects that lead to disease. But the many small ones can help us identify new mechanisms behind our diseases. With his research, Maik Pietzner wants to create an understanding of the specific genes through which these variations in the genome can act. He therefore combines data on the health of millions of people around the world with molecular data at single-cell resolution.

"I have led large-scale work that has identified hundreds of regions in the human genome that are important for the regulation of circulating metabolites and proteins. These findings helped to identify previously unknown disease mechanisms, including proteins relevant to many, even seemingly unrelated, diseases," says Maik Pietzner, the new Professor for Health Data Modelling at the BIH. Pietzner adds: "My group will build on these efforts and develop algorithms to integrate such heterogeneous data and derive testable hypotheses for experimental follow-up. The focus is on identifying new targets for pharmaceutical interventions."

Benefits for patients and research

Human genetic studies have led to the identification of novel drug targets but can also be used to identify mechanisms that are shared among diseases. Knowledge that can potentially guide the repurposing of already existing, safe and effective drugs. Such ‘drug repurposing’ is very cost-efficient and resource-saving, but until now has mainly been the result of random observations in clinical studies or application in practice. Maik Pietzner wants to use this knowledge to systematically search for ways to adapt drugs for many common but mild diseases for which there are currently no adequate treatment options. The availability of electronic health data opens the possibility of systematically and economically researching diseases in millions of people for the first time.

“This is only now possible thanks to large-scale genetic studies linked to electronic health records. We can investigate diseases that were never considered important enough to invest sufficient resources in the search for safe and effective drugs,” says Pietzner.

Scientists led by Maik Pietzner have already achieved a major success in the BIH Computational Medicine working group: they discovered two genes that increase the risk of the relatively common but little-researched disease Raynaud's syndrome by more than 20%. Drugs that either inhibit or change the effect of the two products of those genes therefore appear to be suitable for significantly alleviating the distressing and painful symptoms of Raynaud's syndrome. Maik Pietzner and his research group are highly motivated and excited about the next findings: "The professorship is an important milestone in consolidating and expanding my research interest in how human genetics can provide information on the development of medicines, but also on their use and intake. These are areas in which I hope to make a difference for patients."

Significance for translation

The new professorship for “Health Data Modeling” is embedded in the Center of Digital Health at the BIH. The expertise in the field of human genetics can help guide the BIH's efforts to identify drug targets. This includes validation in trials with patients, but also risk mitigation through the identification of potential adverse side effects. This can significantly improve patient care.

Maik Pietzner studied biomathematics and completed his doctorate with distinction in 2017 at the University of Greifswald on metabolomics in endocrine diseases. This work helped him to obtain a DFG fellowship, with which he moved to the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge in 2018, where he had the opportunity to lead several influential publications on “omics” on a population scale. These included pioneering studies on protein quantitative trait loci (pQTLs), areas in the genome associated with different blood levels of circulating proteins. These pQTLs proved to be essential for understanding otherwise poorly understood areas in the genome that are associated with disease risk. In 2021, he joined the BIH to work on computational medicine with Prof. Claudia Langenberg. Since then, he has been contributing to building up the research group. The acquisition of an ERC Starting Grant in 2023 helped him to develop genetically anchored drug target discovery and drug repurposing as a new topic at the BIH.

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Contact
Press office

Berlin Institute of Health in der Charité (BIH)

Konstanze Pflüger: +49 (0)30 450 543 343
Katharina Kalhoff: +49 (0)1515 7579574
Dr. Sophie Elschner: +49 (0)1522 5610126
pressestelle-bih@bih-charite.de
https://www.bihealth.org/en/

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About the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH)
The mission of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) is medical translation: transferring biomedical research findings into novel approaches to personalized prediction, prevention, diagnostics and therapies and, conversely, using clinical observations to develop new research ideas. The aim is to deliver relevant medical benefits to patients and the population at large. As the translational research unit within Charité, the BIH is also committed to establishing a comprehensive translational ecosystem – one that places emphasis on a system-wide understanding of health and disease and that promotes change in the biomedical translational research culture. The BIH was founded in 2013 and is funded 90 percent by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and 10 percent by the State of Berlin. The founding institutions, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Max Delbrück Center, were independent member entities within the BIH until 2020. Since 2021 the BIH has been integrated into Charité as its so-called third pillar. The Max Delbrück Center is now the Privileged Partner of the BIH.

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More information:

https://www.bihealth.org/en/notices/maik-pietzner-receives-professorship-for-hea... To the press release

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Portrait Maik Pietzner
Birgit Formann
© Charité | Birgit Formann

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Criteria of this press release:
Journalists
Medicine
transregional, national
Personnel announcements
English

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