Kim Wendrich and Nikolas Klink, Ph.D. students in the Gersch Lab, were recently honored with conference poster awards for their research on ubiquitin.

Kim Wendrich was awarded the UbiQ poster prize because of her outstanding work on the activity and specificity of human deubiquitinases during the conference "Deubiquitylases and Ubl-proteases: from fundamental principles to therapeutic opportunities 2023" in Edinburgh. The conference brought together world-renowned researchers from academia and industry to share new insights into this class of enzymes and translate them into further therapeutic approaches. (Please link to the Word conference at https://www.eventsforce.net/biochemsoc/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=80072&eventID=160)

Nikolas Klink was awarded the 1st poster prize in collaboration with Johanna Seier from the Paschen Lab, Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital Essen, during the retreat of the Collaborative Research Center 1430 "Molecular Mechanisms of Cell State Transitions". This award recognizes the discovery of an unexpected role of deubiquitinases in skin cancer and a potential therapeutic approach that is now being further investigated. (Please link to Collaborative Research Center at  https://www.uni-due.de/crc1430/).

Moreover, during  the same event,  the publication Grethe, Schmidt et al. Nat Comm 2022, 13, 5950 on preceding work on specific deubiquitinase inhibitors received the "CRC1430 - Paper of the Year 2022/23-Award" (Please link to full text at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33559-4).