Patrik PhD defense and farewell
Patrik successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Splicing factor 3b subunit 1 and its implication in pancreatic cancer” in November 2021! He continued his work as a PostDoc for 6 months to complete his ongoing projects, one of which was recently published in Cell Reports. Patriks’ unprecedented energy and his unique ability to bring cheerfulness and fun to any situation will be missed by all of us. However, we are certain that in his new role as a Medical Science Liaison at AbbVie, he will be in the perfect spot to apply his strengths and flourish in his upcoming career! All the best for your future and we look forward to meeting you outside the lab from now on and sharing memories together with a drink and sun on our faces.

Nina PhD defense and farewell
Nina successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Investigating gastrointestinal cancers using various CRISPR screening approaches” in November! We congratulate her wholeheartedly on her well-deserved success! Unfortunately, however, all good times come to an end, and we have to let her leave for new adventures that will start with her position as a Postdoc at Roche. We will miss her joyful presence in the lab but are sure that she will have a great time at her new workplace. Thanks for all you have contributed to the lab over the past years! Rest assured, our coffee machine will always be happy to meet you again! 🙂

New paper out!
We performed an extensive analysis of CRISPR adenine- and cytosine base editing outcomes and establish BE-DICT, a deep learning model capable of predicting base editing. The project was initiated in 2019 when Kim and Sharan joined the lab and was a collaborative effort with the Krauthammer lab (UZH). Read more about the story here and find the publication online here.

New paper out!
We are celebrating our publication in Nature Biotechnology, where we applied adenine base editing in the liver of primates and lowered blood cholesterol levels by inactivating PCSK9. This project was a collaborative effort between the University and ETH Zurich, Acuitas Therapeutics, UPenn and Synthego. The project started 2018, when Tanja joined the lab. At first, the project was aimed to establish LNP-mediated in vivo delivery of adenine base editor mRNA into the mouse liver. Promising results prompted us to adapt the approach to non-human primates.
Read more about the story here, or in recent reviews: 1, 2, 3

Welcome to Eleonora Ioannidi as our newest PhD student
Eleonora joined our lab in January 2021 after completing her Master’s degree in Biotechnology from ETH Zurich. She conducted her master’s thesis at the Abudayyeh-Gootenberg lab at MIT in Boston (USA), focusing on novel viral gene delivery systems and Prime editing. We are happy to have her on our team and are confident that she will have great time in our lab and will be able to contribute to the future of gene editing technologies!

Farewell of Sabina Egli
After finishing her Master’s degree at ETHZ, Sabina joined our lab in 2019 as a research technician. During her time in our lab, she supported a variety of different projects while also keeping the lab running with her dedication to the daily organizational business. We thank her for her time and engagement in our lab and wish her all the best in her exciting new role as Senior Associate in Neurogenimcs at Roche (Basel)!
Dec 22, 2020
Farewell of Lukas Villiger
Lukas joined the lab in 2016 as a MD PhD student at ETHZ. With his extraordinary drive to tackle an overwhelming amount of experiments, coupled with his smart working style, he has managed to contribute greatly to the field of gene editing. It was a pleasure to have him as a colleague and friend in our group and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors as a PostDoc in the Abudayyeh-Gootenberg lab at the MIT in Boston (USA)!
Oct 15, 2020
Welcome to Yanik Weber as our newest PhD student
Yanik joined our lab as a PhD student after he received his Master’s degree in Nanoscience from the University of Basel. With his experience in directed evolution during his Master thesis (Khammash group at D-BSSE/ETH in Basel) he brings a great skill set to our laboratory. It is a pleasure to see how quickly he becomes familiar with new techniques and how he further enriches our laboratory atmosphere. Nice to have you on the team!

Noëlle Bakker finished her Master’s internship
Noëlle successfully finished her Master’s project working with Tanja on an exciting project with adenine base editors. It was a real pleasure working with her and we wish Noëlle all the best for her future!
We look forward to hearing about her next adventures when she starts a new chapter as a PhD student in the Netherlands!

New Schwank Lab website now online
Our new lab site is now online under schwanklab.org! We hope you like it and we will continue to keep it up do date.
Jul 23, 2020