Prof. Dr. Christian Freund

Prof. Dr. Christian Freund

Freie Universität Berlin
Institute for Chemistry & Biochemistry
Thielallee 63
14195 Berlin
Phone: +49 (30) 838 51189
Fax: +49 (30) 838 56413
E-Mail: christian.freund@fu-berlin.de



Position and Status

Professor of Protein Biochemistry (W2)


Scholarships and awards

2009 - Joint grant recipient and winner of the “Innovationswettbewerb Medizintechnik” of the German Ministry of Education and Research
1999 - Biofuture award of the German Ministry of Education and Research
1997 - Post-doctoral scholarship by the Swiss National Funds



University training and degree

1986 - 1989 - Chemistry, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
1983 - 1986 - Chemistry, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf

 

Advanced academic qualifications

2005 - Habilitation (venia legendi), Biochemistry, Freie Universität Berlin
1994 - PhD, Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry, AG NMR (Holak), Department of Structural Biology (Huber)

 

Postgraduate professional career

2018 (Jan-March) - Visiting scholar at the University of California San Francisco
2011 - present - Full professor of Biochemistry (W2), FU Berlin
2000 - 2011 -Independent research group leader, Leibniz-Institute of Molecular Pharmacology, Berlin
1997 - 2000 - Joint appointment post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School/Dana- Farber-Cancer Institute in Boston with Prof. Gerhard Wagner and Prof. E. Reinherz (Scholarship by the Swiss National Funds).
1994 - 1997 - Postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Dr. A. Plückthun, Biochemical Institute of the University of Zürich/Switzerland.

Coordinating functions and editorial work

Since 2019 - Coordinator (with Nevan Krogan, QBI, UC San Francisco) of the FU Berlin- UCSF Collaborative Initiative
2016 - present - Founding member and Vice-chair of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TRR 186 (Heidelberg/Berlin) “Molecular Switches in the Spatio- Temporal Control of Cellular Signal Transmission”
2016 - present - Editorial board member at “Scientific Reports”
2010 - 2013 - Spokesman (together with Prof. Hartmut Oschkinat) of the Forschergruppe "Interfering with intracellular protein-protein interactions-probing protein functions with small molecules" (FG 806).
2008 - 2009 - Spokesman of the “Zukunftsforum” of the Dechema (Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e. V.).

Most important publications

  1. Freund, C. and Höfer, T. (2019) A Missing Switch in Peptide Exchange for MHC Class II Molecules. Front. Immunol. 10:2513.
  2. Gerth F, Jäpel M, Sticht J, Kuropka B, Schmitt XJ, Driller JH, Loll B, Wahl MC, Pagel K, Haucke V, Freund C. (2019). Exon Inclusion Modulates Conformational Plasticity and Autoinhibition of the Intersectin 1 SH3A Domain. Structure, 27, 977-987
  3. Álvaro-Benito, M., Morrison, E., Ebner, F., Abualrous, E. T., Urbicht, M., Wieczorek, M., Freund, C. (2018). Distinct editing functions of natural HLA-DM allotypes impact antigen presentation and CD4+ T cell activation. Cell Mol Immunol., doi: 10.1038/s41423-018-0181-1.
  4. Gerth F., Jäpel, M., Pechstein, A., Kochlamazashvili, G., Lehmann, M., Puchkov, D., Onofri, F., Benfenati, F., Nikonenko, A.G., Fredrich, K., Shupliakov, O., Maritzen, T., Freund, C.*, Haucke, V.* (2017). Intersectin associates with synapsin and regulates its nanoscale localization and function. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A. 114, 12057-12062
  5. Henning, L. M., Santos, K.F., Sticht, J., Jehle, S., Lee, C.T., Wittwer, M., Urlaub, H., Stelzl, U., Wahl, M.C., Freund, C. (2017). A new role for FBP21 as regulator of Brr2 helicase activity. Nucleic Acids Res. 45, 7922-7937
  6. Wieczorek, M., Sticht, J., Stolzenberg, S., Günther, S., Wehmeyer, C., El Habre, Z., Álvaro-Benito, M., Noé, F. and Freund, C. (2016). MHC class II complexes sample intermediate states along the peptide exchange pathway. Nat. Commun. 7, 13224
  7. Morrison, E., Kuropka, B., Kliche, S., Brügger, B., Krause, E. and Freund, C. (2015). Quantitative analysis of the human T cell palmitome. Sci. Rep., 5:11598
  8. Kuropka, B., Witte, A., Sticht, J., Waldt, N., Majkut, P., Hackenberger, C. P. R., Schraven, B., Krause, E., Kliche, S., and Freund, C. (2015). Analysis of phosphorylation-dependent protein interactions of ADAP reveals novel interaction partners required for chemokine-directed T cell migration. Mol. Cell. Proteom. 14, 2961-72
  9. Schlundt, A., Günther, S., Sticht, J., Wieczorek, M., Roske, Y., Heinemann, U. & Freund, C. (2012). Peptide linkage to the alpha-subunit of MHCII creates a stably inverted antigen presentation complex. J. Mol. Biol., 423, 294-302
  10. Günther S, Schlundt A, Sticht J, Roske Y, Heinemann U, Wiesmüller KH, Jung G, Falk K, Rötzschke O, and Freund C. (2010) Bidirectional binding of CLIP peptides to an MHC class II molecule, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 107, 22219-22224