Mareike Stieg and Mathias Riebold receive DGE Awards
At the 58th Annual Congress of the German Society of Endocrinology (DGE) in Lübeck, two young researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry receive awards for their outstanding clinical work in the field of Neuroendocrinology.
Mareike Stieg studied medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Her doctoral thesis concentrated on combined chemo-immunotherapy in aggressive pancreatic tumors in a mouse model. In September 2013, she started her specialty training in internal medicine / endocrinology at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry as a scientific collaborator and assistant physician.
Mareike Stieg works at the Outpatient Clinic of Neuroendocrinology and Andrology headed by Günter Stalla. Her clinical focus lies on the treatment of patients suffering from rare hormonal diseases or pituitary dysfunction, such as Morbus Cushing. During her daily work at the outpatient clinic, new scientific questions continuously arise.
Thanks to the “Pfizer Young Investigator Fellowship 2015” worth 10,000 Euros, Mareike Stieg can now examine the influence of hydrocortisone administration on physical and mental aspects, especially the general well-being of patients suffering from adrenal hypofunction. She wants to find out whether measurement of cortisol in human hair or analysis of urine metabolites can serve as biomarkers to determine the optimal dosing strategy for patients.
Mathias Riebold, former biology student at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, receives the “Schoeller Junkmann Award 2015” from the DGE for his PhD thesis. He carried out his thesis at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, as part of the research group of Günter Stalla. The award comes with 12,000 Euros in prize money.
In his thesis, Mathias Riebold studied the molecular mechanisms of how the plant extract silibinin (from milk thistle seeds) serves as a non-invasive treatment strategy against Morbus Cushing. His research results were published in the highly renowned scientific journal Nature Medicine.
Mathias Riebold is now doing research on cellular stress in liver tumors as a postdoc at the University Hospital Tübingen, Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectious Diseases, headed by Nisar P. Malek.
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