Prof. Dr. med. Bodo C. Melnik

Short CV

Bodo C. Melnik studied medicine at the University of Münster, Germany (1975-1982). In 1982, he completed his dissertation on high-density lipoprotein metabolism at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, University of Münster. From 1982 to 1984, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone Institute, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he continued lipoprotein research supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 1984, he established his DFG-funded skin lipid research laboratory at the Department of Dermatology, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, where he trained as a dermatologist. In 1989, he completed his habilitation on the Biochemistry and Pathobiochemistry of Epidermal Lipid Metabolism. In 1990, he founded his own dermatological outpatient practice in Gütersloh, Germany, and joined the Department of Dermatology, Environmental Medicine and Health Theory at the University of Osnabrück, where he was appointed Associate Professor in 1995. He retired as Senior Lecturer of the University of Osnabrück in 2025.

Alongside his clinical work in general dermatology and allergology, Melnik focused his scientific interests on skin diseases associated with lipid metabolism, including sebaceous gland lipid metabolism in acne, skin-barrier lipid metabolism in atopic dermatitis, and epidermal lipid metabolism in rare genodermatoses.
Since 2009, his research has concentrated on milk biology - particularly milk extracellular vesicles and exosomal RNAs - with special attention to milk’s endocrine, metabolic, and epigenetic programming, and milk´s role in health and chronic Western diseases.

Bodo C. Melnik has authored over 250 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and several contributions to scientific and medical textbooks. In 1989, he received the prestigious Felix Hoppe-Seyler Award of the German Society for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. In 2023, together with Prof. Wolfgang Stremmel (Baden-Baden) and Prof. Ralf Weiskirchen (Aachen), he was awarded the Nutricia Science Award for Breastfeeding and Milk Research. He is editorial board member of the Journal of Translational Medicine and member of the European Society of Dermatological Research (ESDR).