Introduction

Welcome! My name is Kim Kirchhoff and I am a German biologist fascinated on the power, diversity and complexity of natural products. I first got in touch with natural product research while assessing animal venoms for novel drugs, with special focus on stingray venom.

In my PhD thesis entitled “Integrative bioprospecting of toxic natural products”, I first joined perspectives from multiple disciplines such as evolutionary biology, biochemistry, proteomics, genetics, physiology, pharmacology, and bioinformatics, in order to assess stingray venom’s evolutionary background, bioactivity, intra- and interspecific variability in venom composition, and even potential applicability in pharmacology. In the step, I established a novel network pharmacology approach to elucidate the mechanisms of action of putative pain-inducing toxins in stingray venoms.

From 2016 to 2020, I was part of the Animal Venomics group at the Fraunhofer Institute in which the concept of my network pharmacology approach served as basis upon which we built by joined forces a drug discovery pipeline to assess the venoms of a plethora of yet neglected animal species such as assassin bugs, remipedes, fish and lizards as well as the poisonous fire salamandra. Therefore, we performed transcriptomic analysis for the prediction of venom composition and identification of interesting candidate molecules, followed by their synthetic, recombinant or cell-free production. Finally, the proteic products were tested in in vitro bioactivity assays on mouse cell lines previously established and monitored by myself.

In the future, I am enthusiastically looking forward to being part of a multidisciplinary team that pushes forward the limits of innovation in natural product drug discovery for biomedical applications. My previous experiences in network pharmacology raised my interest in the myriad possibilities of screening methods that, when brought together, elucidate major physiological processes, synergisms and polypharmacology indicators, crucial for a successful drug development.

This website aims to condense all important facts on my person and research (interests) for everyone interested and supplies you with my contact data in case of questions, suggestions and interest.

Cheers, Kim

Interests and future perspectives

During my PhD I got in contact not only with venomous fish species, but also with marine invertebrates as soft and stony corals, sea anemones, fire worms, and sponge species (e.g. Haliclona sp.). However, the access to, amount and purity of marine resources are often importantly limiting their assessment.

Therefore, I have the great hope that this problem can be solved stepwise by: i) close and multiple collaborations of all scientific fields involved in natural product research; ii) closing knowledge gap with new data; iii) re-evaluating existing data to mine additional informative levels; iv) standardize assessment and evaluation procedures; v) centralization of scientific findings in curated and reviewed databases; and finally, vi) making good use of integrative approaches to enable the construction of a not-comprehensive but highly robust data network. In the future, I am convinced that greater networking of science and data will enable us to better map marine resources and their potential.

E-mail: Kirchhoff@integrative-venomics.com Legal Notice Copyright © Integrative Venomics