Wolf Reik

Wolf Reik discovered the waves of epigenetic reprogramming during mammalian development that erase and re-establish DNA methylation patterns, and demonstrated that cancer cells undergo analogous reprogramming events that reset epigenetic memory to enable tumor evolution and therapy resistance. His work on epigenetic clocks and biological aging revealed that cancer cells exhibit accelerated epigenetic aging with characteristic methylation drift patterns that accumulate as epigenetic memory of replicative history. He investigates partial epigenetic reprogramming approaches to rejuvenate tumor-infiltrating immune cells and restore anti-tumor function.