Marcus Conrad Professor

Helmholtz Zentrum München & Technical University of Munich

Dr. Marcus Conrad is the Director of the Institute of Metabolism and Cell Death at Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) and a professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He has long been engaged in research on the selenoprotein GPX4 and ferroptosis. He demonstrated that GPX4 knockout mice develop lethal renal failure due to ferroptosis (NCB, 2014), established the essential role of selenium for the anti-ferroptotic function of GPX4 (Cell, 2018), and identified FSP1 as the first GPX4-independent ferroptosis suppressor gene (Nature, 2019). He also discovered that the fully reduced form of vitamin K functions as an antioxidant to effectively inhibit ferroptosis (Nature, 2022), and revealed that phase separation of FSP1 promotes ferroptosis, leading to the development of a novel anticancer drug named icFSP1 (Nature, 2023). Marcus Conrad has published over 160 papers, holds multiple patents, and is a co-founder and shareholder of ROSCUE Therapeutics GmbH.

His lab is trying to bridge the gap between basic science and translation through the identification and pharmacological targeting of key nodes in cell death and necro-inflammatory processes. Knowledge of the molecular mechanisms underlying life and death decisions in (patho)physiological contexts is key for both the identification of biomarkers and the development of novel therapies to combat degenerative diseases and cancer.