Dirk Mossmann

Biochemist in Michael Hall's Basel lab who studies how mTOR and nutrients rewire metabolism in liver cancer, and first author of the 2023 Cell study showing that arginine drives liver tumour metabolism

Biozentrum, University of Basel, Michael N. Hall lab (2018–2023, most recent confirmed affiliation) · Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Freiburg (2016–2018)

In 2018 Dirk Mossmann, Sujin Park and Michael Hall wrote a review in Nature Reviews Cancer arguing that mTOR signalling and cell metabolism decide each other in cancer. mTOR reads the nutrients a cell has and turns on the making of proteins, fats and nucleotides. In turn, the metabolic state of a tumour cell changes how mTOR signals. A review gathers earlier experiments; it does not report new ones.

Before Basel, Mossmann worked at the University of Freiburg in Germany, at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, where Mossmann co-authored work on mitochondrial protein import and a 2018 study linking mutations in the mitochondrial presequence protease to a childhood neurodegenerative disease.

In Basel, Mossmann moved to liver cancer. As first author of a 2023 paper in Cell, Mossmann showed that liver tumours in mice and patients pile up the amino acid arginine, because tumour cells take more of it in and use less. High arginine binds the protein RBM39 and pushes the cells toward a more primitive, dividing state. The team suggested the drug indisulam, which degrades RBM39, as a way to target this. Mossmann also co-authored a 2022 Molecular Cell study on how the transcription factors TEAD2 and E2A shut down acetyl-CoA production to favour tumour growth. A position after 2023 could not be confirmed.

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