Marcus Peter's Biography

Marcus Peter, Professor, Northwestern University

Dr. Peter received his B.S. in biology from the University of Frankfurt (Germany) in 1982 followed by an M.S. and Ph.D. in biochemistry, with distinction, from the University of Bayreuth (Germany) in 1988. In 1989 he joined Dr. Cox Terhorst’s laboratory at Harvard’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute as a postdoctoral fellow supported by fellowships from NATO and the German Research Council. In 1992 Dr. Peter returned to Germany and took a position as staff scientist in the Department of Tumor Immunology, headed by Dr. Peter Krammer, at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. In 1993 he became Head of the Signaling Group in the same Department and obtained tenure in the Cancer Center. During the next 6 years Dr. Peter made a number of seminal discoveries on the molecular composition and function of the Fas apoptosis signaling pathway. The discovery of the Fas death inducing signaling complex in 1995 was followed by the isolation and cloning of caspase-8 in equal collaboration with Dr. Vishva Dixit and with an important contribution by Dr. Matthias Mann (voted by Science as one of the ten most important scientific discoveries in 1996). Shortly afterward he cloned the caspase-8 regulators v-FLIP (in collaboration with Dr. Jurg Tschopp) and c-FLIP and characterized the novel apoptosis regulator. In 1998, he discovered DEDD, followed by delineation of the two-pathway model of Fas signaling in the same year. Dr. Peter’s research at the German Cancer Center resulted in 50 publications and the Walther and Christine Richtzenhain Prize. In 1999 Dr. Peter joined the faculty of the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago. Appointed initially at the rank of non-tenured Associate Professor, he was awarded tenure in 2001 and promoted to Full Professor in 2003. In 2007 Dr. Peter identified the miRNA let-7 to regulate HMGA2 expression in ovarian cancer. This discovery was followed by the identification of the miR-200 family of miRNAs as a master regulator of the epithelial to mesenchymal transition. In 2010 Dr. Peter moved to Northwestern University where he became the leader of the Translational Research in Solid Tumor program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. A major part of the lab at Northwestern now studies the role of miRNAs in tumor progression and EMT.