From small molecules to complex organelles

Latest News

May 2, 2025 TRIM52 maintains cellular fitness and is under tight proteolytic control by multiple giant E3 ligases The E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIM52 is one of the most unstable proteins in the human proteome. Curiously, however, despite having been lost in most mammals, TRIM52 has been retained in humans and old-world primates. In work recently published in Nature Communications, members from the Versteeg lab (Max Perutz Lab) and collaborators reveal that TRIM52 confers a fitness advantage to cells by helping to resolve topoisomerase 2 DNA lesions. Read more →
March 14, 2025 Georg Winter appointed as Life Science Director of AITHYRA Georg Winter will take over the life science directorship of AITHYRA, the Research Institute for Biomedical Artificial Intelligence of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His work in targeted protein degradation is not only advancing fundamental research but also paving the way for practical applications. Read more →
March 11, 2025 Welcome Angelina Gross as Associate Member in our SFB network Angelina Gross, previously postdoc in the lab of Yasin Dagdas at the GMI, will join the BOKU University in Vienna as a Principal Investigator. We are pleased to welcome Angelina as an Associate Group Leader in our SFB network. Read more →

About the Program

Targeted Protein Degradation: From small molecules to complex organelles

Our Special Research Program is a collaborative research platform to unravel how proteins are targeted for degradation. We focus on the two major cellular proteolytic pathways, the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy, and the crosstalk between them in the cytoplasm and in the nucleus. Furthermore, we investigate how small molecules can be used to chemically reprogram the degradation systems, enabling the targeted proteolysis of selected proteins in a spatially and temporally controlled manner …

Selected Publications

2024 Tau fibrils evade autophagy by excessive p62 coating and TAX1BP1 exclusion Science Advances Ferrari L, Bauer B, Qiu Y, Schuschnig M, Klotz S, Anrather D, Juretschke T, Beli P, Gelpi E, Martens S Go to publication →
2024 Large-scale chemoproteomics expedites ligand discovery and predicts ligand behavior in cells Science Offensperger F, Tin G, Duran-Frigola M, Hahn E, Dobner S, Ende CWA, Strohbach JW, Rukavina A, Brennsteiner V, Ogilvie K, Marella N, Kladnik K, Ciuffa R, Majmudar JD, Field SD, Bensimon A, Ferrari L, Ferrada E, Ng A, Zhang Z, Degliesposti G, Boeszoermenyi A, Martens S, Stanton R, Müller AC, Hannich JT, Hepworth D, Superti-Furga G, Kubicek S, Schenone M, Winter GE Go to publication →
2023 Structural basis of how the BIRC6/SMAC complex regulates apoptosis and autophagy Science Ehrmann JF, Grabarczyk DB, Heinke M, Deszcz L, Kurzbauer R, Hudecz O, Shulkina A, Gogova R, Meinhart A, Versteeg GA, Clausen T Go to publication →

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