Martin Wegner, a former member of IBC2 has received the Alumni Doctorate Award at the Dies Academicus of the Medical Faculty at Goethe University for his PhD thesis.

During his doctoral studies, Wegner worked in Manuel Kaulich’s Gene Editing group.
His research led to the development of the 3Cs Method, which improves the creation of CRISPR-Cas sgRNA libraries by avoiding traditional cloning techniques, allowing for more efficient experimentation. 3Cs was further advanced into 3Cs Fixed-pair and 3Cs Multiplexing, enabling the creation of combinatorial CRISPR libraries. These methods allow testing of up to millions of sgRNA combinations.
As an example, in the context of autophagy, these approaches have successfully validated known genetic interactions and uncovered new ones, demonstrating their transformative potential in genetic research.
Additionally, Wegner developed ReCo, an open-source software tool designed to automate the processing of CRISPR sequencing data, helping to streamline data analysis.
The 3Cs Method has been patented and is now marketed by Vivlion GmbH, a spin-off company from Goethe University, where Wegner is Head of R&D and Customer solutions.