Varun Venkataramani

Varun Venkataramani is a physician-scientist and board-certified neurologist at University Hospital Heidelberg. His work helped to establish the emerging field of Cancer Neuroscience, which investigates how mechanisms of the nervous system drive the progression of tumors. He discovered that brain tumors form functional glutamatergic synapses with neurons, showing that gliomas integrate into neural circuits and exploit neuronal activity to grow. Building on this insight, his group revealed how tumor cells co-opt neuronal mechanisms of migration and invasion, and pioneered new approaches for mapping tumor connectivity. His contributions have been recognized with several honors, among them the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for Young Researchers and the Eppendorf Young Investigator Award.