Anna Stierschneider studied in the bachelor and master program “Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology“ at the IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences, where she later completed her PhD research project while enrolled in the PhD program “Regenerative Medicine” at the University for Continuing Education Krems. She has supervised several undergraduate and graduate students in the Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology program at the IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences. Her main research interests are in the fields of cell biology, cancer, and immunology. She has established physiologically relevant 3D in vitro cell culture models for High Content Screening as well as optogenetic endothelial and pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell lines with light-inducible TLR4 to study the molecular and regulatory mechanisms of TLR4 in cancer and inflammation and to provide a novel tool for anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer screening. Her latest research project aims to develop light inducible TLR stem cell lines to examine the specific effects of the TLR signaling in and on stem cells, on tumour cells, and on various cells in the tumour microenvironment.