Dr Christian Nefzger

Christian Nefzger studies transcriptional and epigenetic changes that occur during cellular transitions to understand their molecular basis and in order to control them. He obtained a Master equivalent in biology at the Technical University of Munich in Germany and then undertook his doctoral studies at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences related to directed differentiation of pluripotent stem cells. Following his PhD, he has been working as a research fellow at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute in Melbourne since late 2011. He primary research focus is the study of cell fate conversions that occur rapidly as a consequence of forced cellular reprogramming as well as the subtler and slower, albeit functionally meaningful changes that occurring during the ageing process in somatic stem cell niches. His research has yielded new insights into the basic mechanisms that govern nuclear reprogramming which in turn allowed the direct generation of naive human induced pluripotent stem cells from somatic cells with expected applications in basic and clinical research.