浪花直播

Biography

I was born in Osnabr眉ck in Northern Germany and studied chemistry in Freiburg, Madison/WI, and Aachen. I obtained an MSc in 1999 with Samuel H Gellman and my PhD in 2003 with Carsten Bolm.

After my postdoctoral studies with Barbara Imperiali at MIT, I established my research group at the Freie Universit盲t Berlin. In 2012, I was appointed Leibniz-Humboldt Professor of Chemical Biology at the FMP Berlin and the Humboldt University Berlin.I have long been fascinated by the structure and function of biomolecules, especially peptides and proteins.

In our group, we use various approaches from organic chemistry, biochemistry, and biophysics. These include, for instance, the development of chemoselective or bioorthogonal reactions or new cellular delivery strategies. With the chemical tools and probes in hand, we functionalize proteins and antibodies to generate protein-based therapeutics against cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and viral infections and cell-permeable antibodies for intracellular targeting.

In 2020, I co-founded the Munich-based company Tubulis, which engineers better tolerable cancer drugs, especially antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), using conjugation technologies from our lab, particularly the P5-labeling platform.

Recently, I received the Leonidas Zervas Award from the European Peptide Society (2018), the Xiaoyu Hu Memorial Award from the Chinese Peptide Society (2023), and the Protein and Peptide Astra Zeneca Award from the Royal Society (2023). In 2020, I was the first recipient of the Falling Walls Foundation Breakthrough of the Year award in the Life Sciences, which recognized our contributions to developing next-generation biopharmaceuticals.

RSC affiliations

• Advisory board, RSC Chemical Biology