Friederike Herbst-Nowrouzi, PhD

Director of the Human Genome Editing Laboratory (HGEL)

Dr. Friederike Herbst-Nowrouzi is a stem cell and molecular cancer biologist with more than 15 years working experience in translational oncology and hematopoietic gene therapy.

She graduated with a Diploma degree in Biochemistry strongly focused on Toxicology, Pharmacology and Cancer Biology from the Eberhard-Karls University in Tübingen, Germany. Following her interest in cancer research and her fascination for stem cells, she joined the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg to contribute to a better understanding of benign and malignant hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). She obtained her Ph.D. from the Ruperto-Carola-University in Heidelberg, Germany. As a graduate student, she established multiple in vitro and in vivo assays for hematopoietic and embryonic stem cells to assess the stability and efficacy of vectors applied in human gene therapy trials, to characterize the activity and heterogeneity of HSPCs and to identify driving mechanisms for clonal selection.

In her position as Team Lead and Lab Head at the DKFZ & NCT (National Center for Tumor Diseases, Heidelberg), she aimed at the identification of novel druggable vulnerabilities in the context of precision oncology and she and her team discovered intracellular mechanisms regulating normal and malignant HSCs. During the past years, she used her expertise to assess heterogeneity and functional properties of tumor-initiating cells of solid cancers including target discovery and pre-clinical drug developmental programs in close collaboration with academic and pharmaceutical partners.

Here at UPenn, she will support CCI’s vision by combining her background in hematology and oncology to steer the development and application of novel cellular immunotherapeutic approaches, especially by applying innovative gene editing strategies in HSPCs.