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Two New BIH Professorships: Focus on Musculoskeletal Regeneration and Genome Regulation
The Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) is strengthening its expertise in translational research with two new W2 professorships: Dr. Sven Geißler has been appointed Professor of “Biological Foundations of Musculoskeletal Regeneration,” and Dr. Daniel Ibrahim has been appointed Professor of “Regulatory Genomics.” Both researchers represent cutting-edge approaches to understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying health and disease with the aim of enabling personalized therapeutic options.
The health of the musculoskeletal system is critical for mobility, independence, and quality of life. When bones, cartilage, muscles, or tendons do not heal properly after injury, those affected often suffer from persistent pain, limited movement, and sometimes further surgery. This is where Dr. Sven Geißler’s research comes in. His goal is to understand why healing processes fail in some patients and how impaired recovery can be detected early and effectively improved.
A key focus of his work is the development of prognostic approaches that use biological markers—such as specific immune cell subtypes or molecular signatures in injured tissue—to identify early risk factors for impaired healing. These markers also form the basis for new therapeutic strategies, including cell-based treatments, targeted pharmacological immune modulation, or the use of bioactive biomaterials.
Geißler’s research follows a translational approach: clinical data as well as tissue, and blood samples are collected directly from patients, analyzed, and tested in preclinical models, that closely replicate human healing. The resulting insights fed back into clinical studies to develop effective, personalized treatment strategies.
“If we understand who is at risk of poor healing and why, we can intervene early — rather than waiting for failure,” Geißler explains.
About Sven Geißler
Sven Geißler studied biotechnology and bioprocess engineering in Hamburg and earned his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin in 2011 with a thesis on age-related disturbances in musculoskeletal regeneration. Since 2019, he has led the “Prognostic Markers & Targeted Therapies” research group at the BIH Center for Regenerative Therapies and is deputy head of the “Musculoskeletal System” research area. His work has led to several clinical studies (including BioBone, HIPGEN, IloBone, PROTO, PRECISION), numerous patents, and multiple award-winning publications on the diagnostics and treatment of musculoskeletal healing disorders.
Understanding How Genes Control Health – The Research of Daniel Ibrahim
Dr. Daniel Ibrahim studies how the genome encodes cell-type specific gene activity and how disruptions in these processes can lead to disease. His professorship in “Regulatory Genomics” at the BIH focuses on understanding how the non-coding genome switches genes on and off in specific cell types and he wants to harness this knowledge for medicine.
“My goal is to understand the principles of gene regulation—how they guide cell differentiation and how they are disrupted in disease. This knowledge can ultimately serve as the foundation for future gene and cell therapies,” Ibrahim explains.
In his research, Ibrahim combines functional genomic analysis with innovative genome engineering and synthetic biology methods. His team has developed technology that allows the generation of large synthetic DNA fragments and their targeted insertion into stem cells. This technology allows to design so-called gene regulatory domains on the computer and study their function in human cell types and disease models.
His pioneering work on chromatin misfolding as a cause of disease (Franke*, Ibrahim* et al., Nature 2016) and on transcription factor misregulation (Cell 2020) has been highly influential. With his ERC Starting Grant “SYNREG,” Ibrahim is now developing methods to “write” synthetic gene regulatory domains in order to program cell-type specific gene activity into a novel type of large transgenes.
About Daniel Ibrahim
Daniel Ibrahim studied biology at Freie Universität Berlin and earned his PhD summa cum laude at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2014. Following research at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, he headed the “Gene Regulation in Cell Differentiation and Disease” group at the BIH Center for Regenerative Therapies from 2019 onward. His research integrates developmental biology, functional genomics, and genome engineering to build a comprehensive understanding of gene regulation that opens new perspectives for innovative therapies.