Dr Benedict-Tilman Berger

Benedict-Tilman Berger studied Biochemistry at the Freie Universität Berlin. Both his Bachelor thesis (Bayer HealthCare, Department of Screening) and his Master thesis (SGC Oxford, Department of Protein Kinases and Chemical/Structural Biology) focused on binding kinetics of protein kinase inhibitors and possible structural explanations for a slow binding of inhibitors, which might be a parameter for drug optimization in terms of selectivity, safety or dosing intervals. In 2016, he joined the group of Prof. Dr. Stefan Knapp at the SGC site in Frankfurt am Main to work on his PhD thesis that he finished in 2020. He was following up on his previous work on kinases, using more advanced techniques, e.g., the NanoBRET cellular target engagement assay, to explain in vitro and in cellulo binding kinetics of kinase-ligand interactions on a structural level. Currently, he is contributing to a consortium (SFB 1399) that aims to identify new epigenetic targets in small cell lung cancer with cellular screening and manages the kinome-wide NanoBRET screening platform as a teamleader. In 2021 he founded a CRO company named CELLinib GmbH (Frankfurt, Germany) to make target engagement in living cells using NanoBRET available to the community.