Dr Verena Körber

I lead a computational research group studying somatic evolution at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Paresh Vyas at Oxford. I completed my PhD on brain cancer evolution and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Thomas Höfer at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg.

Our tissues have a remarkable capacity to renew themselves, allowing us to recover from injury and maintain healthy organs throughout life.

Yet, tissue renewal comes at a cost. As cells divide, they accumulate changes in their DNA, known as mutations. While most mutations are harmless, some alter how cells behave. Over time, these changes can impair tissue maintenance, contribute to ageing, and drive the development of cancer.

In close collaboration with clinicians and experimentalists, I aim to understand how tissues grow, adapt, and deteriorate in health and disease by combining next-generation sequencing with mathematical modelling. Using principles from evolutionary theory, I develop mathematical models of mutation and selection, allowing us to trace the ancestry of individual cells from naturally occurring mutations.

Ultimately, I hope that my work will improve our understanding of healthy ageing, reveal the earliest stages of cancer development, and support earlier detection and more effective treatments.

Selected publications

• Körber, V.§ et al., Detecting and quantifying clonal selection in somatic stem cells, Nature Genetics 57, 1718-1729 (2025). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-025-02217-y
• Okonechnikov, K.*, Joshi, P.*, Körber, V.* et al. Oncogene aberrations drive medulloblastoma
  progression, not initiation. Nature 642, 1062-1072 (2025). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08973-5
• Körber, V. et al. Neuroblastoma arises in early fetal development and its evolutionary duration
  predicts outcome. Nature Genetics 55, 619-630 (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-023-01332-y
• Körber, V. et al., Evolutionary Trajectories of IDHWT Glioblastoma Reveal a Common Path of
  Tumorigenesis Instigated Years ahead of Initial Diagnosis. Cancer Cell 35, 692-704 (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccell.2019.02.007

*shared first author, §shared corresponding author

Awards and distinctions

• Cancer Research UK Career Development Fellowship 2025
• Walter Benjamin Postdoc fellowship, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 2023
• Kind Philipp Prize for Pediatric Oncology research 2022