Meet one of our early-career scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute: Dominic Denk, MD, MHBA, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Michael Karin, PhD. Denk studies cancer and gastrointestinal malignancies with a focus on how the immune system reacts to tumors and how to improve immunotherapies.
When and how did you become interested in science?
It was quite by chance. I’m a physician by trade in Germany, and the first way I got into science was through medical school. You learn about topics such as biochemistry and physiology, and it leads you to wonder about what processes behind the scenes. These subjects sparked my interest, and I started reading articles and books on my own time in the library.
And then the second reason is that, in Germany, you are expected to do research for a few months to earn your academic credentials. It naturally pushed me into the research world and made me realize how much I like running experiments and analyzing data.
What did you imagine you would be doing professionally, and how did it evolve?
I had many ideas. For quite some time while I was younger, I wanted to be a sports journalist.
My mom is a physician’s assistant and was always watching medical shows on TV in the background when I was growing up. I was never pushed into healthcare, but it was always present. Once I got to high school and found I enjoyed health and science courses, I started to think about going to medical school.
And once I started, I never looked back because I love being a physician.
What are the key areas of research you focus on?
I work on cancer and gastrointestinal malignancies. I want to better understand how the immune system reacts to tumors and how to improve immunotherapies. Immunotherapies have become the standard of care for many cancers, but not necessarily those in the gastrointestinal tract.
Back in Germany. I worked on colorectal cancer and now I’m looking at pancreatic cancer. We want to know what makes pancreatic cancer metastasize to the liver because it is a tumor that spreads to the liver quite often.
Once it does, the prognosis is much, much worse. If we can learn what attracts pancreatic cancer cells to the liver and why the disease becomes more malignant there, it may lead to methods for preventing the cancer from spreading and better treating it if it has spread.
What motivates you about your research?
Ultimately, it is about improving patient care. I have had the privilege of working in a large academic center that takes care of a lot of GI cancer patients. I have seen many patients with hepatocellular carcinoma undergo liver transplantation and experienced a cure in the end.
But for most patients, it’s not the case. I have seen patients who came to the hospital concerned about weight loss only to be diagnosed with advanced stage cancers. I’ve cared for people over months and seen them deteriorate. It’s terrible and makes me wonder if there is something more we can do.
We’ve had great advances for many malignancies, but not for every patient. And research is how we will get to a better place for more patients and their families.
What do you like about working here?
There is a great sense of community, I think, and tons of scientific seminars across different fields. Everybody is very friendly and collaborative.
One thing that stands out is that there is very little red tape when it comes to solving problems. Recently, we had an incubator breaking down. We wrote one email and it was fixed within an hour or so. And that could have been catastrophicand led to months of delays for many projects in our lab.
What are your career goals?
Ideally, I will continue being a physician-scientist using the expertise I’m building upon here in the Karin lab. I would like to start a small lab so that I could continue to care for patients while working with trainees and mentees to maintainresearch momentum.
As a practicing physician and a researcher, I would love to help bridge the gap between the basic science laboratory bench and the clinic. Too many promising projects never make it past the lab bench to actually be tested in the real world. We’ll never know if some of these ideas could help people if we don’t advance them from petri dishes and animal models to see how they perform in clinical trials.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not in the lab?
I’m doing tons of hiking and enjoy exploring the area. I try to spend as much time as possible on the beach, so my big non-science goal for 2026 is to learn how to surf.
Postdocs at Sanford Burnham Prebys are pushing the boundaries of science every day through curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. This series highlights their unique journeys, what inspires their work, and the impact they’re making across our labs.
