Raine Visiting Professor Lecture – 28 August 2019

Professor Thomas Erren

University of Cologne, Germany

 will present a Lecture entitled:

Chronobiology: An evolutionary legacy challenged in today’s 24×7-world

on 28 August 2019, 4.00 pm

at Curtin University, Building 400, Room 303

Kent St, Bentley WA

All welcome

Professor Thomas Erren MD, MPH is Director & Chair of the Institute and Policlinic of Occupational Medicine, Environmental Medicine and Prevention Research, University of Cologne, Germany, and is also Visiting Professor at Oxford University. Professor Erren’s main area of interest is how biological clocks help humans anticipate, and adapt to, environmental rhythms of day and night and how this affects our health (chronobiology). His group aims at studies which can lead to insights into causes of disease and whether these diseases can be prevented using light, sleep and rhythm hygiene. A key interest lies in translational chronobiology: How can we translate insights from laboratory studies into field and epidemiological studies in humans?

One main theme is how adverse health effects are linked with disruption of the daily cycles in humans (chronodisruption). Professor Erren and his team have published a series of meta- and pooled analyses regarding chronodisruption, including presumably multidirectional associations between sleep and cancer. Another main theme is how the susceptibility of circadian systems to promote health and to fight off disease can be affected. Recently, after translating results from rodent experiments into epidemiological predictions, Professor Erren and his colleagues detected first evidence of links between Perinatal Light Imprinting of Circadian Clock and Systems [PLICCS], on the one hand, and the development of internal cancers in children, on the other: The PLICCS explorations used large-scale data from the International Childhood Cancer Cohort Consortium (I4C) which has brought together six prospective cohort studies of children across the globe.

University Host:

Professor Lin Fritschi

School of Public Health, Curtin University

Telephone: 9266 9476

Email: lin.fritschi@curtin.edu.au