Research Summary

Collectively, the broad, long-term objective of my laboratory is to gain mechanistic insight into how interrelated processes, namely DNA repair, chromatin regulation, and transcriptional regulation, affect normal brain physiology and disorders. More specifically, we investigate mechanisms of chromosomal DNA double-strand break formation and repair in neural stem/progenitor cells and other neural cell types in the contexts of neurodevelopment, neural functioning, diversity, and disease. In the latter context, a major current focus is the elucidation of causes of genome instability and chromosomal rearrangements in neural progenitors that give rise to medulloblastoma and other brain cancers.

Education

University of Heidelberg, Germany, MD, 11/03 Medicine
University of Heidelberg, Germany, PhD, 07/05, Tumor Virology
Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, UCSF, Postdoctoral Fellow, 01/07, Mitochondrial metabolism, Sirtuin biology
Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine & Division of Molecular Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital and Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, Research Fellow, 06/10, DNA repair, Chromatin, Sirtuin biology

Honors & Awards

  • 2001
    Biomedical Exchange Program/DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Fellowship
  • 2005
    Doctoral thesis awarded "summa cum laude", University of Heidelberg
  • 2006
    Sandler Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award in Basic Sciences, UCSF Sandler Program in Basic Sciences
  • 2008
    Ellison Medical Foundation/AFAR Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship Award
  • 2012
    NIH Career Development Award
  • 2013
    Martin D. Abeloff V Scholar Award, The V Foundation for Cancer Research
  • 2016, 2017
    UCSF Brain Tumor SPORE Career Development Program Award
  • 2017
    Suzanne Marie Haderle and Robert Vincent Haderle Endowed Chair, UCSF
  • 2017
    Kimmel Scholar, Sidney Kimmel Foundation

Selected Publications

  1. Fuchs J, Schwer B, El-Khamisy SF. Editorial: Genomic Instability and Neurodegeneration. Front Aging Neurosci. 2022; 14:940459.  View on PubMed
  2. Dorman LC, Nguyen PT, Escoubas CC, Vainchtein ID, Xiao Y, Lidsky PV, Nakajo H, Silva NJ, Lagares-Linares C, Wang EY, Taloma SE, Cuevas B, Nakao-Inoue H, Rivera BM, Schwer B, Condello C, Andino R, Nowakowski TJ, Molofsky AV. A type I interferon response defines a conserved microglial state required for effective neuronal phagocytosis. bioRxiv. 2022 Feb 22.  View on PubMed
  3. Chuntova P, Hou Y, Naka R, Yamamichi A, Chen T, Goretsky Y, Hatae R, Nejo T, Kohanbash G, Mende AL, Montoya M, Downey KM, Diebold D, Skinner J, Liang HE, Schwer B, Okada H. Novel EGFRvIII-CAR transgenic mice for rigorous preclinical studies in syngeneic mice. Neuro Oncol. 2022 02 01; 24(2):259-272.  View on PubMed
  4. Cheng YC, Snavely A, Barrett LB, Zhang X, Herman C, Frost DJ, Riva P, Tochitsky I, Kawaguchi R, Singh B, Ivanis J, Huebner EA, Arvanites A, Oza V, Davidow L, Maeda R, Sakuma M, Grantham A, Wang Q, Chang AN, Pfaff K, Costigan M, Coppola G, Rubin LL, Schwer B, Alt FW, Woolf CJ. Topoisomerase I inhibition and peripheral nerve injury induce DNA breaks and ATF3-associated axon regeneration in sensory neurons. Cell Rep. 2021 09 07; 36(10):109666.  View on PubMed
  5. Christin Schmidt, Annika Carlson, William Weiss, Bjoern Schwer. BIOL-11. THE ROLE OF ABERRANT EXPRESSION OF PRDM6 IN THE DEVELOPING CEREBELLUM AND IN GROUP 4 MEDULLOBLASTOMA. Neuro-Oncology. 2021 Jun 1; 23(Suppl 1):i5-i5.  View on PubMed
  6. Christin Schmidt, Albertas Navickas, Frederique Zindy, Dana Farmer, Davide Ruggero, Hani Goodarzi, Martine F Roussel, Bjoern Schwer, William Weiss. OMIC-03. TRANSLATIONAL CONTROL IN MYC AND MYCN MEDULLOBLASTOMA. Neuro-Oncology. 2021 Jun 1; 23(Suppl 1):i37-i37.  View on PubMed
  7. Christin Schmidt, Annika Carlson, William Weiss, Bjoern Schwer. TMOD-28. NEW APPROACHES FOR ELUCIDATING MEDULLOBLASTOMA DEVELOPMENT VIA HINDBRAIN BLASTOCYST COMPLEMENTATION. Neuro-Oncology. 2020 Nov 9; 22(Supplement_2):ii233-ii234.  View on PubMed
  8. Dai HQ, Liang Z, Chang AN, Chapdelaine-Williams AM, Alvarado B, Pollen AA, Alt FW, Schwer B. Direct analysis of brain phenotypes via neural blastocyst complementation. Nat Protoc. 2020 10; 15(10):3154-3181.  View on PubMed
  9. Chang AN, Liang Z, Dai HQ, Chapdelaine-Williams AM, Andrews N, Bronson RT, Schwer B, Alt FW. Neural blastocyst complementation enables mouse forebrain organogenesis. Nature. 2018 11; 563(7729):126-130.  View on PubMed
  10. Alt FW, Schwer B. DNA double-strand breaks as drivers of neural genomic change, function, and disease. DNA Repair (Amst). 2018 11; 71:158-163.  View on PubMed
  11. Wei PC, Lee CS, Du Z, Schwer B, Zhang Y, Kao J, Zurita J, Alt FW. Three classes of recurrent DNA break clusters in brain progenitors identified by 3D proximity-based break joining assay. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 02 20; 115(8):1919-1924.  View on PubMed
  12. Wood JG, Schwer B, Wickremesinghe PC, Hartnett DA, Burhenn L, Garcia M, Li M, Verdin E, Helfand SL. Sirt4 is a mitochondrial regulator of metabolism and lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 02 13; 115(7):1564-1569.  View on PubMed
  13. Garinis GA, Schwer B, Schumacher B. Editorial: DNA damage & immunity. Mech Ageing Dev. 2017 07; 165(Pt A):1-2.  View on PubMed
  14. Frederick W. Alt, Pei-Chi Wei, Bjoern Schwer. Recurrently Breaking Genes in Neural Progenitors: Potential Roles of DNA Breaks in Neuronal Function, Degeneration and Cancer. Genome Editing in Neurosciences. 2017 Jan 1; 63-72.  View on PubMed
  15. Schwer B, Wei PC, Chang AN, Kao J, Du Z, Meyers RM, Alt FW. Transcription-associated processes cause DNA double-strand breaks and translocations in neural stem/progenitor cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Feb 23; 113(8):2258-63.  View on PubMed
  16. Wei PC, Chang AN, Kao J, Du Z, Meyers RM, Alt FW, Schwer B. Long Neural Genes Harbor Recurrent DNA Break Clusters in Neural Stem/Progenitor Cells. Cell. 2016 Feb 11; 164(4):644-55.  View on PubMed
  17. Gostissa M, Schwer B, Chang A, Dong J, Meyers RM, Marecki GT, Choi VW, Chiarle R, Zarrin AA, Alt FW. IgH class switching exploits a general property of two DNA breaks to be joined in cis over long chromosomal distances. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Feb 18; 111(7):2644-9.  View on PubMed
  18. Khongkow M, Olmos Y, Gong C, Gomes AR, Monteiro LJ, Yagüe E, Cavaco TB, Khongkow P, Man EP, Laohasinnarong S, Koo CY, Harada-Shoji N, Tsang JW, Coombes RC, Schwer B, Khoo US, Lam EW. SIRT6 modulates paclitaxel and epirubicin resistance and survival in breast cancer. Carcinogenesis. 2013 Jul; 34(7):1476-86.  View on PubMed
  19. Shi W, Bain AL, Schwer B, Al-Ejeh F, Smith C, Wong L, Chai H, Miranda MS, Ho U, Kawaguchi M, Miura Y, Finnie JW, Wall M, Heierhorst J, Wicking C, Spring KJ, Alt FW, Khanna KK. Essential developmental, genomic stability, and tumour suppressor functions of the mouse orthologue of hSSB1/NABP2. PLoS Genet. 2013; 9(2):e1003298.  View on PubMed
  20. Alt FW, Zhang Y, Meng FL, Guo C, Schwer B. Mechanisms of programmed DNA lesions and genomic instability in the immune system. Cell. 2013 Jan 31; 152(3):417-29.  View on PubMed

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