Four top-class prices for MPI of biochemistry

Prof. Dr. F.-Ulrich Hartl honored with Dr. Paul Janssen Award and Breakthrough Prize

Prof. F.-Ulrich Hartl, head of the Department “Cellular Biochemistry” at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and Medical Director Prof. Arthur Horwich of Yale School of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute receive the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research 2019 as well as the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences 2020. Hartl and Horwich receive the awards for their revolutionary insights into chaperone-mediated protein folding, which have broad implications throughout biology and medicine, and hold promise for the development of new therapeutic strategies for treating diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cancer, in which defects in protein folding are involved. The Breakthrough Prize is the highest endowed science prize in the world with three million US dollars. Prof. Hartl and Prof. Horwich share the prize money with three other fellow ­researchers.

Portrait_Prof.-Dr.-Franz-Ulrich-Hartl

Prof. Dr. F.-Ulrich Hartl

Prof. Dr. Axel Ullrich honored with the Lasker Award 2019

Prof. Dr. Axel Ullrich, Emeritus Director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and former Genentech scientist, receives the ­Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award 2019, along with PhD. H. Michael Shepard, former Genentech scientist, and PhD. ­Dennis J. Slamon from the University of California, Los Angeles. The prize is the highest biomedical scientific award in the USA and is awarded with 250,000 US dollars. The researchers were honored for their invention of Herceptin, the first monoclonal antibody that blocks a cancer causing protein, and the development of a life-saving therapy for women with breast cancer.

Portrait_Prof.-Dr.-Axel-Ullrich

Prof. Dr. Axel Ullrich

Prof. Brenda Schulman receives Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine 2019

Prof. Brenda Schulman, head of the department “Molecular Machines and Signaling” at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, receives the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine 2019, endowed with 300.000 Euro, together with the neurobiologist Prof. Gary R. Lewin from Berlin. Schulman receives the award for her groundbreaking work on the mechanisms of ubiquitin transfer at the atomic level. The molecule ubiquitin serves as an intracellular stop signal and controls what happens in a living cell—from cell division to the defence against bacterial infections.

Portrait_Prof.-Brenda-Schulman

Prof. Brenda Schulman