Senior Scientist
Research focus
Risk-stratified cancer screening
Cancer early detection
Molecular and clinical epidemiology
Multi-omics biomarker discovery and validation (proteomics, epigenomics, and metabolomics)
Projects
PROSURV (Work Package PI): Molecular patient profiles and treatment predicting long-term and late effects among colorectal cancer survivors, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR).
NICE (PI): Novel blood-based biomarker signatures for colorectal cancer early detection, funded by DKFZ Hector Seed Funding.
FORECAST POLICY (PI): Longitudinal 4-Kallikrein Profiling to Inform Policy-Relevant Prostate Cancer Screening Strategies, funded by DKFZ FS-C Internal Funding Program.
LUCAS (Work Package Co-PI): Lung cancer screening: minimizing harm and maximizing benefit, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR).
LUCIA (Work Package Co-PI): Lung cancer-related risk factors and their impact assessment, funded by Horizon Europe.
Cohort studies with data analyses:
UK Biobank (United Kingdom; N = 502,500): Multi-omics data integration to refine cancer risk prediction.
NAKO (Germany; N = 204,000): Risk-stratified screening for multiple cancers.
HUNT (Norway; N ≈ 230,000): Lung cancer risk prediction.
Endoscopy III (Denmark; N = 10,061) and BLITZ (Germany; N = 13,343): Early detection of colorectal cancer.
Other activities and memberships
Translational Lung Research Center Heidelberg (TLRC): Faculty.
German Cancer Consortium (DKTK): Proteomics and Epigenomics Ad-hoc working group member.
German National Cohort (NAKO): OMICS expert group member.
International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED).
Publications
Selected publications from recent years
Bhardwaj M, Sun YQ, Frick C, Schöttker B, Røe OD, Holleczek B, Mai XM, Brenner H. (2026). Blood-based DNA methylation marker model for short-term and long-term lung cancer risk prediction. BMC Med, 24(1), 344. DOI: 10.1186/s12916-026-04973-y
Bhardwaj M, Frick C, Schöttker B, Holleczek B, Brenner H. (2026). Next-generation proteomics improves lung cancer risk prediction. Mol Oncol, 20(4), 995–1007. DOI: 10.1002/1878-0261.70166
Brenner H, Seum T, Bhardwaj M, Hoffmeister M. Diagnostic performance of a circulating tumor DNA-based blood test compared to fecal immunochemical test in colorectal cancer screening. (2025). Cancer Commun (Lond), 45(11):1496-1499. DOI: 10.1002/cac2.70066
Bhardwaj M, Schöttker B, Holleczek B, Brenner H. (2023). Enhanced selection of people for lung cancer screening using AHRR (cg05575921) or F2RL3 (cg03636183) methylation as biological markers of smoking exposure. Cancer Commun (Lond), 43(8), 956–959. DOI: 10.1002/cac2.12450
Bhardwaj M, Weigl K, Tikk K, Holland-Letz T, Schrotz-King P, Borchers CH, Brenner H. (2020). Multiplex quantitation of 270 plasma protein markers to identify a signature for early detection of colorectal cancer. Eur J Cancer, 127:30-40. DOI: 10.1016/j.ejca.2019.11.021