Alexander Rauch is Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark, affiliated with the Department of Endocrinology at Odense University Hospital and the Steno Diabetes Center Odense. I studied biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Jena back in 2002 and early on got interested in transcriptional regulation. I was fascinated of what we learned about transcription factors and their impact on chromatin looping and transcriptional initation by studying nuclear hormone receptors. I therefore joined the group of Jan Tuckermann who worked on the tissue selective actions of glucocorticoids. Focusing on glucocorticoid induced osteoporosis, Jan introduced me to the field of bone research and specifically osteoblast differentiation which became the focus of my research career.
ChIP- and Dnase-seq became the new black and was all around at conferences around 2010. As I wanted to figure out the power of those genome wide techniques I joinined the lab of Susanne Mandrup in 2010. Using functional genomics I studied enhancer dynamics and the transcriptional reprogramming during osteoblast and adipocyte differentiation. Moving across the city of Odense from the natural to the health science faculty in 2018, I joined the research unit of Moustapha Kassem to establish my own research profile. We currently study human patient material, genetic mouse models, and cell culture systems to gain understanding in the transcriptional networks that specify and modulate the differentiation potential of stromal cells into osteoblasts and adipocytes within the bone.