Franziska Wachter

Franziska is currently an Instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an Attending-Physician in the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Division at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children's Hospital. Franziska focuses on novel therapeutic approaches for difficult to treat myeloid malignancies. Her graduate studies in Irmela Jeremia’s laboratory (LMU/Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany) focused on mechanisms of chemoresistance and apoptosis signaling. Her postdoctoral training in Loren Walensky's laboratory at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was dedicated to BCL-2 family protein biology. She identified and characterized BAX activators discovered in an NMR-based fragment screen and studied new inhibitory mechanism of the apoptotic effector protein BAX. She also validated the on-target mechanism of a p53 reactivating stapled peptide drug that is currently in clinical trials. Franziska received an MD from Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Germany, completed residency training in Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital | Boston Medical Center and Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplant Fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital. Franziska utilizes her unique training in medicine, biochemistry, and structural biology to work at the innovative forefront of pediatric oncology and drug development.