Name: Dr. Dennis Mulac
Diploma / M.Sc degree: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
(November 2007)

PhD Project: Cell culture studies of biological active food constituents

Abstract of Research Project


Many ingredients of food and feed are known to be biological active. Especially grain and grain products can be affected by fungi either as raw material directly on the field or during storage, leading to a contamination with mycotoxins. Not only the most dominant mycotoxins like deoxynivalenol, fumonisins or zearalonon are a potential risk, but also degradation products of these mycotoxins with an unknown biological activity formed during food processing. Consumption of contaminated food or feed can lead to different acute and chronic toxic effects. Due to the wide occurrence of the biological active mycotoxins, they are a potential risk in human and animal nutrition.
To study the effect of individual substances or biological active degradation products cell culture experiments using human cells in primary culture are a very useful tool. In contrast to animal experiments cell culture assays are an alternative approach to identify the mode of toxicity. In addition cell culture experiments allow the identification of metabolites formed under in vitro conditions by using LC-ESI-MS/MS.


Publications

D. Mulac, A. K. Grote, K. Kleigrewe, H. U. Humpf
Investigation of the metabolism of ergot alkaloids in cell culture by fourier transformation mass spectrometry
J Agric Food Chem. 59(14) (2011), 7798-807.

D. Mulac, H. U. Humpf
Cytotoxicity and accumulation of ergot alkaloids in human primary cells
Toxicology 282 (2011), 112-121.


Dennis Mulac
eMail: Dennis Mulac