Professor Ellen Fritsche, MD, holds a professorship for Dermatotoxicology within the Clinic for Dermatology and Allergology at the RWTH Aachen. She has a joint affiliation with the Institut für Umweltmedizinische Forschung (IUF) in Dusseldorf where she leads the group of Molecular Toxicology. Within her two research topics (brain and skin) she focuses for the first on the effects of xenobiotics (e.g. endocrine disruptors) on human brain development in vitro by applying a ‘neurosphere model’. Moreover, Pr. Fritsche investigates the molecular grounds for species differences in neural progenitor cell development and responses to xenobiotics. In skin, she investigates enzymatic activities of xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes in human skin and skin cell-derived in vitro models. Additionally, she investigates the consequences of arylhydrocarbon receptor activation in skin cells. For this research she uses mainly primary human cells and employs modern techniques like shRNA-based gene silencing.
