Dennis Plenker's Biography

Dennis Plenker, Research Investigator, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Dennis studied molecular biomedicine at the University of Bonn and received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Cologne where he worked with Roman Thomas at the Dept. of Translational Genomics. During his Ph.D. training he characterized new oncogenes and treatment options in lung cancer. During his postdoc with Martin Sos at the University of Cologne Dennis investigated new treatment options for RET-driven lung cancer and characterized tumors driven by new structural variants of the MET receptor. In 2017 Dennis joined the laboratory of David Tuveson at the Cancer Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Dennis manages and develops the human organoid platform in the Tuveson lab that is focused on patient-derived organoids from pancreatic cancer. Dennis is working on drug resistance and treatment strategies in pancreatic cancer to find more effective therapies. In addition, Dennis and his team are part of the Human Cancer Models Initiative and have successfully generated organoids from a wide variety of different cancer types that are available to the scientific community through ATCC.