Harald Mischak, born 1961 St. Pölten in Austria, received his PhD in technical science from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, in 1986. Between 1988 and 1993, after postdoctoral work on the Rhinovirus receptor at the University of Vienna (Institute for Biochemistry), he was on leave as an invited scientist on signalling by protein kinase C and Raf at the Laboratory of Viral Carcinogenesis (funded by the Fulbright Foundation) and as a Schroedinger and Fogarty Fellow at the Laboratory of Genetics of NIH National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
He continued his research on kinases as Group Leader at the GSF - National Research Center for Environment and Health, Munich, Germany from 1993-1998. He wrote his habilitation in clinical microbiology at the Technische Universität München on Protein Kinase C in Signal Transduction. After one year as a scientific group leader at Franz-Volhard Klinikum (MDC) at Berlin-Buch, he worked on the structure of kinases and related molecules at the NIDDK, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. In 1999 he took up a position at the Department of Nephrology at Medical School of Hannover. Here he founded Mosaiques diagnostics and therapeutics AG in 2002, which was started with the aim to identify disease-specific polypeptides. Currently, he is the chief scientific officer of Mosaiques AG as well as executive director of Mosaiques diagnostics GmbH and Mosaiques DiaPat GmbH. With more than 400 scientific publications on signaling and proteomics that have been cited over 32.000 times (h-index 96 in Google), he is one of the leading experts worldwide in the field of proteome research, personalized medicine and applied systems biology. In addition, more than 100 patent applications have been filed with Prof. Mischak named as inventor, the majority on proteomic biomarkers.
Among his major achievements is the identification of distinct biological roles of Protein Kinase C. He was the first to show that Protein Kinase C isoforms display highly divergent biological properties, and he described these in differentiation and oncogenic transformation (Mischak et al. 1993, J Biol Chem 268, 1749-1756 and 20110-20115) and associated these with distinct intracellular localization (Goodnight, Mischak, et al. 1995, J Biol Chem 270:9991-10001). Together with Walter Kolch (for Raf signaling, e.g. Kolch et al. 1993, Nature 364:249-252), and Hans Hacker (for CpG signaling, e.g. Hacker, Mischak et al. 1998, EMBO J 17:6230-6240) he pinpointed the role of kinases in several major signaling mechanisms. All of these manuscripts have been cited several hundred times. Based on his experience on proteomics in basic research, he initiated the use of urinary proteomics and capillary electrophoresis coupled mass spectrometry for clinical application, and is the leading authority in clinical proteomics and biomarker identification. Among his achievement in this field are the development of guidelines for clinical proteome analysis, where he led a large international and multidisciplinary group to develop clinically relevant proteomic biomarkers.
The two main focuses of Prof Mischak’s work are:
- identification, validation, and implementation of proteomic biomarkers, aiming especially at biomarkers associated with chronic kidney disease, coronary artery disease, heart failure, and certain types of cancer
- uncovering the molecular changes on a proteomic level that are relevant in, or even cause of, the major diseases mentioned above. This approach is based on the biomarkers identified, but also on addition proteomic, metabolomic and genomic data. Using appropriate bioinformatic approaches, the high-dimensional data will be combined to identify the underlying molecular structures and ultimately develop a molecular model of the respective disease, which in turn will allow identifying the most appropriate therapeutic targets for intervention, and implementation of personalized precision medicine.
