Dr. rer. nat. Batool Shannan

Research Focus

My research focuses on understanding how melanoma cells adapt to therapeutic, metabolic, and microenvironmental stress through dynamic changes in cellular state plasticity, stress-response signaling, and epigenetic regulation. In particular, I investigate how repeated hypoxia-reoxygenation stress, therapy exposure, and chromatin regulators such as KDM5B reshape melanoma biology by modulating mechanotransduction signaling, mitochondrial function, oxidative stress adaptation, and autophagy-dependent survival pathways.

A major focus of my work is to understand how adaptive stress programs promote melanoma resistance to radiotherapy, targeted therapy, and other treatment modalities, and how these resistant cell states evolve during disease progression and therapy exposure. I am particularly interested in identifying the molecular dependencies that allow melanoma cells to survive therapy-induced stress and subsequently drive tumor recurrence and metastatic outgrowth. By integrating functional genomics, epigenetics, radiation biology, metabolism, and tumor microenvironment research, my work aims to identify targetable vulnerabilities/dependencies that emerge during adaptive stress responses and therapy resistance and exploit them to improve durable treatment responses in melanoma.

To address these questions, I utilize a broad portfolio of preclinical melanoma models, including 2D and 3D tumor spheroid systems, cycling hypoxia-adapted cell models, and in vivo tumor models that recapitulate clinically relevant stress conditions and therapeutic responses.

Current projects:

1. PROTAC-induced chromatin cell states in melanoma (part of CRC1430)
2. Cycling hypoxia-driven resistance and adaptation in radiotherapy in melanoma cells
3. Metabolic polarization of macrophages as early driver of therapy resistance in melanoma (part of CRC1752)

Key publications:

1. Larafa S, Schaffrin M, Braß P, Váraljai R, Scharfenberg S, Kravchenko-Balasha N, Polinovski G, Herlyn M, Tarade N, Wiemann S, Roesch A, Schadendorf D, Jendrossek V, Matschke J*, Shannan B*. (2026). The role of KDM5B in creating synthetic vulnerabilities in combination with radiotherapy in melanoma cells. Cell Commun Signal. doi: 10.1186/s12964-026-02714-5.
2. Placke JM, Bottek J, Váraljai R, Shannan B, Scharfenberg S, Krisp C, Spangenberg P, Soun C, Siemes D, Borgards L, Hoffmann F, Zhao F, Paschen A, Schlueter H, von Eggeling F, Helfrich I, Rambow F, Ugurel S, Tasdogan A, Schadendorf D, Engel DR, and Roesch A. (2025). Spatial proteomics reveals sirtuin 1 to be a determinant of t-cell infiltration in human melanoma. Br J Dermatol 192(3), 481-491; doi: 10.1093/bjd/ljae433.
3. Stejerean-Todoran I, Zimmermann K, Gibhardt CS, Vultur A, Ickes C, Shannan B, Bonilla Del Rio Z, Wölling A, Cappello S, Sung HM, Shumanska M, Zhang X, Nanadikar M, Latif MU, Wittek A, Lange F, Waters A, Brafford P, Wilting J, Urlaub H, Katschinski DM, Rehling P, Lenz C, Jakobs S, Ellenrieder V, Roesch A, Schön MP, Herlyn M, Stanisz H, and Bogeski I. (2022). MCU controls melanoma progression through a redox-controlled phenotype switch. EMBO Rep 23(11), e54746; doi: 10.15252/embr.202254746.
4. Chauvistré H, Shannan B, Daignault-Mill SM, Ju RJ, Picard D, Egetemaier S, Váraljai R, Gibhardt CS, Sechi AM, Kaschani F, Keminer O, Stehbens SJ, Liu Q, Yin X, Jeyakumar K, Vogel FCE, Krepler C, Rebecca VW, Kubat L, Lueong SS, Forster J, Horn S, Remke M, Ehrmann M, Paschen A, Becker JC, Helfrich I, Rauh D, Kaiser M, Gul S, Herlyn M, Bogeski I, Rodríguez-López JN, Haass NK, Schadendorf D, and Roesch A. (2022). Persister state-directed transitioning and vulnerability in melanoma. Nat Commun 13(1), 3055; doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-30641-9.
5. Vogel FCE, Bordag N, Zügner E, Trajkovic-Arsic 4, Chauvistré H, Shannan B, Váraljai R, Horn S, Magnes C, Siveke JT, Schadendorf D, and Roesch A. (2019). Targeting the H3K4 Demethylase KDM5B Reprograms the Metabolome and Phenotype of Melanoma Cells. J Invest Dermatol 139(12), 2506-2516.e10; doi: 10.1016/j.jid.2019.06.124.
6. Shannan B, Matschke J, Chauvistre H, Vogel F, Klein D, Meier F, Westphal D, Bruns J, Rauschenberg R, Utikal J, Forschner A, Berking C, Terheyden P, Dabrowski E, Gutzmer R, Rafei-Shamsabadi D, Meiss F, Heinzerling L, Zimmer L, Livingstone E, Varaljai R, Hoewner A, Horn S, Klode J, Stuschke M, Scheffler B, Marchetto A, Sannino G, Grunewald TGP, Schadendorf D, Jendrossek V, and Roesch A. (2019). Sequence-dependent cross-resistance of combined radiotherapy plus BRAF(V600E) inhibition in melanoma. Eur J Cancer 109, 137-153; doi: 10.1016/j.ejca.2018.12.024.