Herbert Waldmann honoured for pioneering contribution to Chemical Biology
 

May 16, 2022

The European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology has awarded Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Herbert Waldmann, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, the "Nauta Pharmacochemistry Award for Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology” for his pioneering work in this field. With the development of a broad range of groundbreaking concepts he has laid the foundation of chemical biology as a discipline and promoted Europe’s scientific community through numerous interdisciplinary partnerships across academia and industry.
 

Herbert Waldmann is a leading protagonist in the field of chemical biology. At the interface between biology and chemistry, he combines methods from both disciplines and uses molecular probes as powerful tools for investigating biological phenomena. One focus of his research is the synthesis and investigation of peptide and protein compounds that control essential biological processes such as the transmission of growth signals or the transport of biomolecules in the cell and thus play a key role in neurodegenerative diseases or the development of cancer. Herbert Waldmann’s research is deeply interdisciplinary and further includes influential articles covering cell-based screening, activity-based protein profiling and chemical proteomics, genetics, and biophysics methodologies.

Since his appointment as Director at the MPI of Molecular Physiology and as Chair of Organic Chemistry at the TU Dortmund in 1999, Waldmann has contributed significantly to the development of Dortmund as a internationally renowned centre for chemical biology. He is the initiator of the Chemical Genomics Centre founded in 2005 in Dortmund, which the Max Planck Society runs together with research-driven pharmaceutical companies. As an author, Herbert Waldmann has published over 500 articles in renowned scientific journals, so far. For his work in the field of chemical biology, he has been awarded numerous prizes and honors, such as the Otto Bayer Prize, the Emil Fischer Medal of the German Chemical Society Chemists (GDCh) and an Honorary Doctorate from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The "Nauta Pharmacochemistry Award for Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology" was established by the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology to honour the memory of Prof. Dr. W. Th. Nauta, whose activities have been very important for the advancement of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology in general, and the development of international organisational structures for these disciplines.

The Nauta Award will acknowledge outstanding results of scientific research in the field of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology obtained by scientists without restriction regarding nationality. The award is given biennially and is endowed with € 7.500 Euro. The awardees are invited to give a lecture at an "EFMC-International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry".

Go to Editor View