Hans-Peter Lenhof

Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Lenhof holds the Chair for Bioinformatics at Saarland University since 2000, where he leads research in computational biology and disease mechanism analysis. His career includes:

• Postdoctoral research at Max Planck Institute for Informatics (1993-1999)
• Research Group Leader at MPI (1999-2000)
• Professor at Saarland University (2000-Present)

His group develops innovative bioinformatics methods with three primary focus areas:

Personalized Cancer Therapy: Creating AI/ML approaches to optimize drug selection from over 200 cancer therapeutics, addressing tumor heterogeneity through predictive modeling of treatment efficacy.

Diagnosis & Prognosis: Pioneering blood-based diagnostic methods using autoantibody and miRNA profiles that demonstrate high clinical sensitivity for multiple cancers and neurological disorders through collaborative studies.

Pathogenic Mechanism Analysis: Employing graph-based network models to visualize and analyze deregulated biological processes, particularly signaling cascades in cancer progression.

The lab maintains active collaborations with Andreas Keller's Clinical Bioinformatics group and Eckart Meese's Human Genetics team. Computational tools developed include BALLView for molecular visualization, GeneTrail for high-throughput data analysis, and specialized frameworks for therapy optimization (MERIDA) and miRNA networks (miRTargetLink).