Rate My Professor Nina Dickerhof

Dr. Nina Dickerhof serves as a Principal Investigator and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science at the University of Otago Christchurch, part of the Faculty of Medicine in the Health Sciences Division. Affiliated with Mātai Hāora – Centre for Redox Biology and Medicine, she possesses specialist expertise in mass spectrometry for measuring oxidative modifications of proteins, peptides, and small molecules. Her academic background includes an MSc in Biotechnology from the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt, Germany, in 2007, and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Otago in 2012, with her thesis examining oxidative stress in cardiovascular disease. Prior to her doctorate, she worked as a Research Assistant at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences from 2007 to 2008. Dickerhof began at the University of Otago in 2008 in the Department of Biochemistry, Dunedin, moving to the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science, Christchurch, in 2012, where she has progressed to her current senior role.

Dickerhof's research elucidates how the immune system utilizes oxidants to combat bacteria and how pathogens evade these defenses. She discovered critical antioxidant systems in Streptococcus pneumoniae enabling survival against oxidative killing by the immune system, including the flavoprotein disulfide reductase Har protecting against hypothiocyanous acid and genes associated with tolerance identified via genome-wide screening. Employing biophysical, structural, and mutational studies, her work aims to disarm bacterial antioxidants. She also investigates immune-derived oxidants causing tissue damage and chronic inflammation, particularly in cystic fibrosis, identifying biomarkers like oxidized glutathione, uric acid, and urinary glutathione sulfonamide for detecting oxidative stress in lung disease. Author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles cited more than 1,200 times, key publications include "Dioxygenation of tryptophan residues by superoxide and myeloperoxidase" (2025, Journal of Biological Chemistry), "Hypothiocyanous acid reductase is critical for host colonization and infection by Streptococcus pneumoniae" (2024), "A newly identified flavoprotein disulfide reductase Har protects Streptococcus pneumoniae against hypothiocyanous acid" (2022), "Changes in urinary glutathione sulfonamide (GSA) levels between admission and discharge of patients with cystic fibrosis" (2024), and "Oxidized glutathione and uric acid as biomarkers of early cystic fibrosis lung disease" (2016).