Professor Janine Erler leads the Erler Lab, a cancer biology research group at the Biotechnology Research and Innovation Centre (BRIC) at the University of Copenhagen.
She is also the BRIC Innovation Co-ordinator and heads the BRIC Innovation Working Group. Janine Erler is a member of the SUND Innovation Working Group and the EU Life Technology Transfer Working Group.
An award-winning research expert in the field of cancer metastasis, Janine Erler graduated from the University of Sussex with a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Genetics in Biotechnology in 2000. Three years later, Janine Erler received her PhD from the University of Manchester for her research on hypoxia-regulated resistance of cancer cells to chemotherapy.
Between 2004 and 2008, Janine Erler underwent postdoctoral training as a Fellow at Stanford University, where she worked specifically on hypoxia-regulated metastasis.
Later in 2008, she started her own independent research group at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, before moving her lab to BRIC in 2012. By 2016, Janine Erler was a full tenured Professor at the University of Copenhagen with a research focus on understanding how the tumour microenvironment regulates metastasis.
The overall aim of the Erler Lab Group is to identify and develop novel effective therapeutic strategies against metastasis for clinical translation in order to decrease the suffering of cancer patients and increase their survival.
Janine Erler is also a serial entrepreneur, having launched two start-ups of her own, and since August 2022 working as the CEO of a pharmaceutical start-up, NEUmiRNA Therapeutics. Based in Denmark, Therapeutics is working on achieving transformative disease modification for neurological conditions by developing RNA therapies.
Janine Erler says: “My research is focused on identifying and developing novel effective therapeutic targeting strategies with the aim to translate these into the clinic for patient benefit”.
EXPERIENCE
2022-present: CEO of NEUmiRNA Therapeutics, Copenhagen
2020-2022: Founder and CEO of LOXiGen, aim to develop small molecule inhibitors of LOX (fibrosis).
2018-2020: Founder and CEO of LOXiPharm, aim to develop monoclonal antibody against LOX (cancer)
2016-present: Biotech Research and Innovation Centre (BRIC), University of Copenhagen, DK, Tenured full Professor in cancer biology with focus on metastasis
2012-2016: Biotech Research and Innovation Centre (BRIC), University of Copenhagen, DK, Associate Professor, tumour microenvironment
2008-2012: The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK, Division of Cancer Biology. Team Leader, hypoxia and metastasis
2004-2008: Stanford University, USA, Department of Radiation Oncology, Postdoctoral Fellow, hypoxia and metastasis
EDUCATION
2000-2003 University of Manchester, UK, School of Biological Sciences
PhD Molecular Pharmacology: “The impact of tumour hypoxia on drug-induced apoptosis”
- University of Sussex, UK, School of Biological Sciences
BSc (Hons) 1st Class, Molecular Genetics in Biotechnology The European School, Culham, Oxfordshire, UK
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