Nils Gassen 

Neurohomeostasis Research Group, 
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy,
Medical Faculty, 
University Bonn

Title 

Neurohomeostasis under Stress: the Crosstalk of Systemic Metabolism and Autophagy in Stress-Related Diseases

Abstract

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Biosketch

Dr. Nils C. Gassen is a Research Group Leader at the Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Bonn, and Visiting Professor at Charité, Berlin. His research investigates how stress reshapes cellular and systemic homeostasis, with a particular focus on autophagy, metabolism, and neuroimmune communication. After completing his PhD in molecular biology at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, he conducted postdoctoral work in translational psychiatry before founding the Neurohomeostasis Research Group in Bonn in 2019. His laboratory combines molecular biology, multi-omics technologies, and controlled human studies to bridge mechanistic discoveries with clinically relevant processes. His work aims to uncover how stress hormones reorganize intracellular trafficking and proteostasis, how these processes shape intercellular signaling and inflammation, and how systemic metabolic states influence brain function and resilience. By integrating experimental models with human cohorts, his research seeks to identify causal pathways linking stress exposure to disease-relevant physiological changes and to explore strategies that restore adaptive homeostasis. Dr. Gassen has contributed to establishing FKBP51 as a key regulator of stress signaling and to defining secretory autophagy as a mechanism linking stress to neuroinflammation. His work is published in leading journals including Nature Communications, PNAS, and Science Advances.