Alexander Brehm studied biochemistry and molecular biology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the University of Edinburgh. He did his PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg with Hans Schöler on the pluripotency factor Oct4. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, he began researching chromatin-regulating enzymes in Tony Kouzarides' group, which he continued as a junior research group leader at the Chair of Molecular Biology (chair holder: Peter Becker) at the Adolf Butenandt Institute of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. After his habilitation, he was appointed university professor at the Philipps University of Marburg in 2006.
There he is Managing Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Tumor Research (IMT). His research group uses biochemical and molecular biological methods to investigate the mechanisms of epigenetic gene regulation and their role in development and disease processes. One focus is on the investigation of chromatin-modifying enzymes in the model organism Drosophila.
