PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Dr. Hombach-Klonisch completed her medical training at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, in 1991. She pursued her PhD training in Pathophysiology at the University in Giessen under the supervision of Professor Dr. Werner Seeger and received her PhD in 1994. After spending family time with her small children, Dr. Hombach was granted a post-doctoral fellowship (1998-2000) by the Province of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, and performed research on the role of relaxin-like peptides in the placenta at the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Martin-Luther University HalleWittenberg. In 2000, Dr. Hombach accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the University HalleWittenberg and focused her research on cell migration in human breast and thyroid cancer. For her pioneer work on identifying relaxin-like peptides as novel paracrine factors in thyroid cancer cell migration and invasiveness Dr. Hombach was awarded the Merck European Thyroid von Basedow Research Prize from the German Endocrine Society in 2002. In 2003, Dr. Hombach received her professional distinction as Anatomist by the German Anatomical Society and the Medical Association of Saxony-Anhalt. She completed her Habilitation in Tumor Biology in 2004 at the Martin-LutherUniversity Halle-Wittenberg under the guidance of Professor Dr. Dr. B. Fischer. In 2004, she was recruited to the Department of Anatomy and Cell Science, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Manitoba. Her professional engagement continues to be in anatomy teaching and cancer research for which she received the Murray L. Barr Young Investigator Award by the Canadian Association for Anatomy, Neurobiology and Cell Biology in 2009. Dr. Hombach’s current research investigates molecular mechanisms utilized by heterogeneous cancer cell populations to facilitate invasion and metastasis and to promote cancer cell survival under chemotherapy or radiation.