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(Presented at the Barossa "Science Amongst the Vines" symposium)Professor Axel Ullrich |
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Professor Axel Ullrich is the inaugural recipient of the Clifford Prize for Cancer Research. His work in the field of signal transduction research has elucidated major fundamental molecular mechanisms, such as protein phosphorylation, that govern the physiology of normal cells and allowed insights into pathophysiological mechanisms of major human diseases. Professor Ullrich is a pioneer in cancer research and has been responsible for the discovery of the HER2/neu oncogene, the basis of the breakthrough therapeutic for breast cancer, Herceptin (Trastuzumab). Trastuzumab has not only delivered a major clinical benefit to women (a 50% decrease in tumour recurrence) not seen for more than a decade, since the introduction of tamoxifen, but also initiated the era of personalised medicine, as the response is limited to women whose tumours express HER2. More recently, Prof Ullrich has been responsible for developing the first multi-targeted kinase inhibitor, SU11248/SUTENT, for the treatment of cancer. SUTENT has recently passed Phase III studies and is under consideration for approval for treatment of malignant gastrointestinal stromal tumours and metastatic renal cell carcinoma.
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Axel Ullrich
Professor Axel Ullrich was trained as a biochemist at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and earned a Ph.D. in Heidelberg (Germany) in Molecular Genetics in 1975. After a postdoctoral tenure at the University of California, San Francisco, he joined Genentech in 1978. His work in the field of signal transduction research has elucidated major fundamental molecular mechanisms that govern the physiology of normal cells and allowed insights into pathophysiological mechanisms of major human diseases.
For over 25 years Prof. Ullrich has been a leader in gene technology, translating basic science discoveries into medical applications. This led in the eighties to the development of Humulin (human Insulin for the treatment of diabetes; Lilly), the first therapeutic agent to be developed through gene-based technology and the first biotechnology product ever. Another biotechnology product that is based on Prof. Ullrich's work is Herceptin, the first target-directed, gene-based cancer therapy for the treatment of metastatic breast carcinoma (Genentech/Roche). Prof. Ullrich's work has also led to the development of the multi-targeted drug SU11248/SUTENT which has successfully passed Phase III clinical trials and was in August 2005 submitted to the FDA for approval (Pfizer) as a cancer therapeutic.
Since 1988, Prof. Ullrich has been Director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried (Germany) and currently he is a visiting scientist at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Singapore and Research Director of the Singapore Onco Genome Project. He is an Honorary Professor of the Second Military Medical University (Shanghai, China) and the University of Tübingen and elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, the German Academy of Natural Scientists "Leopoldina" and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Among other honours and awards, Prof. Ullrich received the Robert Koch Prize, the Bruce F. Cain Memorial Award of the American Association of Cancer Research and the King Faisal Prize of Medicine. His major contributions to Science have led to his being appointed to advisory boards of internationally renowned institutions such as the Wistar Institute (USA), the Biomedicum (Finland), the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine (Germany) and the International Advisory Council of the EDB (Singapore). His scientific work has been published in more than 450 articles in international journals and with over 58,000 citations he is one of the ten most cited scientists over the past 25 years worldwide.
Prof. Ullrich has been a leader in international Biotechnology development with activities stretching from Germany, to the USA, Singapore and Australia. He is a founder of three biotechnology companies - SUGEN Inc. (USA), Axxima Pharmaceuticals AG (Germany) and U3 Pharma AG (Germany). In addition he has served on numerous Boards of Directors and Science Advisory Boards of biotechnology companies including SUGEN Inc. (USA), BioImage (Denmark), Bionomics (Australia), Cryptome Pharmaceuticals (Australia) and S*Bio (Singapore), and the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim (Germany).
Since 2000 he is a Biotech Advisor of the Economic Development Board of the Singapore Government. Moreover, he is a founding member of the Bavarian Biotech Management Company BioM. In 2001, Time Magazine Europe has named Dr. Ullrich as one of 25 "tech leaders who are changing how we work, live and play" and in 2005 he was elected as recipient of the Marshall School "European BioBusiness Leadership Award".
