

Biography
After obtaining her A-levels from the grammar school Christianeum in Hamburg, Heidi Olzscha studied biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Hamburg and completed her diploma thesis at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry/Laboratory Medicine at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf. After a half-year-long research internship at the Northwestern University in Evanston/Chicago, US, she then continued with her doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry with a Kekulé Scholarship from the Fonds of the Chemical Industry Germany and as an elected member of the Elite Network of Bavaria. She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry in 2010 at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany. In 2011, she was awarded an EMBO long-term fellowship to conduct research on protein quality control and post-translational modifications in the Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford Medical School, UK. She was also awarded a Fulford Junior Research Fellowship in Medicine at Somerville College, University of Oxford from 2013 and a Celgene Fellowship at the University of Oxford Medical Science Division from 2016. In 2018, she established her research group focusing on protein quality control and proteinopathies at the Institute of Physiological Chemistry at the Faculty of Medicine, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. In 2021, she returned to her hometown as Professor of Biochemistry at the Medical Faculty of the Medical School Hamburg MSH.
Teaching
Heidi Olzscha gained her first teaching experience as a doctoral student at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, supervising biochemistry practicals. She then taught in lectures, seminars and in the Oxford-typical tutorial style for medical, biomedical and biochemistry students at the Medical Science Division, University of Oxford, UK, and at Somerville College, University of Oxford. She also supervised medical students at the University of Oxford on the pre-clinical pathology demonstration course and she was also in charge of setting exam papers and questions for the 3rd year FHS Medicine of Neurobiology option. She was awarded an associate fellowship (AFHEA) from the Advance HE at the University of Oxford in Trinity 2016. At the Institute of Physiology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, she taught biochemistry and molecular biology in the medicine and dentistry degree programs and has been a member of examination committees in the first section of the medical examination (1st state examination M1, Physikum) since 2019. She has also supervised Bachelor's and Master's students, as well as medical and scientific doctoral students.
As Professor of Biochemistry, she continues to teach at the Faculty of Medicine at the Medical School Hamburg. In 2023, she was appointed by the Institute for Medical and Pharmaceutical Examination Questions (IMPP) to the Control and Review Commission for the first section of the medical examination (1st state examination M1, Physikum) in human medicine.
Research interest
Heidi Olzscha’s research activities focus on different aspects of protein quality control (PQC) and its implications on proteostasis. She could demonstrate that amyloid protein aggregates can sequestrate those proteins that occupy crucial hub positions in the cellular protein network. She could also show that aberrant acetylation of proteins, as it occurs during the treatment of lymphomas with histone deacetylase inhibitors, leads to protein misfolding and perturbation of different PQC systems, which can be partially reversed by administration of inhibitors for specific bromodomain-containing proteins. For her research on amyloid proteins, she received the Junior Research Award for “Outstanding Research in Biochemistry” from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry.
Ongoing projects in Heidi Olzscha’s research group include research on proteasome shuttling factors and their effects on other PQC proteins, in particular ribosomal proteins and molecular chaperones, which is currently being investigated in collaboration with researchers at the Leibnitz Institute for Ageing Research in Jena. Heidi Olzscha is also interested in discovering the influence of components of the PQC on misfolding-prone proteins which are involved in proteinopathies including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease. In collaboration with the Institute of Physiological Chemistry at the MLU Halle-Wittenberg, the researchers analyse, how these proteins can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and how glycation can influence this process.
The researchers in the group of Heidi Olzscha are also analysing the effect of enzymatically created posttranslational modifications, in particular acetylation and citrullination, and their impact on PQC systems. The researchers collaborate in these projects with research groups from the University of Oxford, Medical Sciences Division, Department of Oncology and with the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology. Since 2019, Heidi Olzscha is principal investigator in the graduate college GRK 2155 ProMoAge, supervising PhD students and medical doctoral students within this program funded by the DFG.
She is a member of the Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM), a reviewer for the European Commission, among others, and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (FRSM) since 2021.
Publications