MPI researcher awarded with Dortmund Biomedicine Award

The Verein zur Förderung der biomedizinischen und klinischen Forschung e.V. awarded five scientists, one from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, at this year's Dortmund Biomedicine Summit at the MPI Dortmund on October 23rd 2018.

The Dortmund Biomedicine Award is awarded to outstanding scientists since 1992. Its aim is to support biological and medicinal research and to improve the communication and cooperation between basic research and clinical research.

“One important aspect is to improve the cooperation of researchers from different fields and disciplines, especially the fields of clinical research and basic research” stressed out by Prof. Dr. Jan Hengstler, director at the Leibnitz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors and president of the “Verein zur Förderung der biomedizinischen und klinischen Forschung e.V.”. An award was given to Dr. Christos Gatsogiannis, Project Group Leader at the MPI. Together with Prof. Dr. Stefan Raunser, director at the MPI, he resolved the first high-resolution structures of the Photorhabdus luminsecens Tc-Toxin complex In three consecutive publications in the journal Nature, the researchers uncovered a complex injection mechanism. Further awards went to Dr. Kai Hensel from the University Witten/Herdecke, for working out how Hepatitis-B viruses influence genes and to Dr. Robert Ahrends from the Leibniz-Institut für Analytische Wissenschaften (ISAS), for identifying special lipids that play a key role in activating thrombozytes.

Five further scientists were awarded for the excellent research: Dr. Dariusch Arbab (Klinikum Dortmund), Mikheil Gogiashvili (ISAS), Prof. Dr. Markus Kukuk (FH Dortmund), Dr. Christian Monsé (IPA) und Dr. Silvia Selinski (IfADo).

JJ