From my point of view teaching at the university level always has been a combination of university demands, research results, current literature and student needs. Especially for medical students the main task has been to guide them as close as possible to chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and statistics. I find it extremely motivating to span the horizon from basic courses up to lectures and seminars for PhD students at the final level, where research topics and recent results are part of the teaching program. I continuously contributed and tried to improve teaching notes, scripts and lab tasks for all the courses I am involved with. In addition I realized very early that the Medical University has to offer additional curricula for natural scientific studies comparable to the University of Vienna. Together with other colleagues at the Max Perutz Labs we started to realize a novel master curriculum for molecular precision medicine at the Medical University together with the University of Vienna. As a member of the curriculum commission of the Medical University I am currently supporting this enterprise. I always tried to support students on bachelor, master and doctoral levels to summarize and evaluate their results as good as possible and to directly convert it into publications, talks and poster presentations at congresses and for seminars.
We investigate the effects L-carnitine exerts as a nutrigenomical metabolite upon gene expression. Based on chip screen analyses collections of genes were identified to be involved in the transcriptional regulation of the “L-carnitine effect”. We primarily want to reveal so called “candidate or susceptibility” genes, sensing L-carnitine levels and how they are involved in clinical pathologies like as hyperlipidemia, insulin resistance and type 2 DM. The results of this research will provide better insight in metabolic aspects of pathologies and their regulation as well as mitochondrial function. A second research area is focused on the use of a super-active human thymidine kinase 1 to treat solid tumors. This recombinant superTK1 was generated by structure-based site directed mutagenesis and integrated in eukaryotic vector systems and transferred into tumor cells. Based on the super-active TK1 we only need very minute amounts of deoxythymidine to induce cytostatic and toxic effects.
Reinhold Hofbauer studied Biochemistry at the University of Vienna and received his PhD (1985). From 1987-1988 Reinhold went as a postdoc to Prof. Dr. D.T. Denhardt (Cancer Research Lab, Univ. of Western Ontario, London, Canada) as an Erwin Schrödinger fellow. In 1997 he got tenured at the Medical University of Vienna and is since then group leader and Ass.Prof at the Center of Med. Biochemistry, Max Perutz Labs, Medical University of Vienna
The engineered superTK1 is locally administered to tumor cells as gene therapeutic (AAVsuperTK1). Cytostatic as well as cytotoxic effects on tumor cells are exerted in a time dependent manner at very low deoxythymidine levels (dTh ≥ 10µM). In the case of systemic exposure these very low dTh concentra¬tions hardly entail any side effects to healthy cells and the organism. Combination treatment with cytostatics (e.g. 5-FU, AraC) is possible in a similar low concentration range (5µM). Therefore marginal side effects without diminishing treatment efficacy can be expected.
L-carnitine has an apparent time-dependent effect on the activity of the vitamin D nuclear receptor pathway. Supplementation of L-carnitine to WRL68 liver cells for 4 hours leads to an immediate increase in activity of the vitamin D signaling activity (up to 2.88-fold induction). However after 24 hours this effect cannot be observed anymore since L-carnitine got completely metabolized in this fraction of time. This example clearly shows the immediate effects L-carnitine has on some important nuclear receptor pathways.