MorphoSys Co-Founder And Member Of The Board Receives Award For Outstanding Scientific Achievements

12-Dec-2000

Professor Andreas Plückthun, co-founder and member of the supervisory board of MorphoSys AG (Neuer Markt: MOR) has received an award from the Karl-Heinz-Beckurts-Foundation for his outstanding scientific as well as commercial achievements in the field of synthetic antibody generation. This is one of three awards being made by the foundation to promote the commercialization of science, each endowed with DM 60,000.

With the award, the Foundation is honoring Professor Plückthun, today at the Biochemical Institute at the University of Zurich, for his biotechnological innovation and its transformation into economic success. He developed important fundamentals for the generation and optimization of human antibodies which led to the foundation of the biotech company MorphoSys in 1992.

Based on his work scientists at MorphoSys developed the company’s platform technology called Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCAL™). This technology allows the generation of 100 % human antibodies in a fully synthetic way, exclusively based on biotechnology, a novel method with a variety of advantages over other technologies for antibody generation.

"Teamwork is essential to achieve such inventions", stated Professor Plückthun. "Therefore, I would like to thank all of my collaborators on the scientific and commercial side. I am looking forward to further fruitful work in both areas".

Andreas Plückthun, born in 1956, received a masters degree in chemistry from the University of Heidelberg, after which he completed a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of California in San Diego in 1982. From 1982 to 1985 he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. From 1985 until 1993 he was group leader at the Genzentrum and Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Munich. He took up his current position as Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Zurich in 1993. His main interest is the design of new proteins: the explanation of their architecture, as pharmaceutical substances and the research of the genome.

The Karl-Heinz-Beckurts-Stiftung has been instituted in 1987 by the former association of research institutes (AGF) which today is the Hermann von Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers (HGF). Research institutes and commercial companies together have raised money for the foundation to promote the partnership between science and economy.

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/490/morphosys-co-founder-and-member-of-the-board-receives-award-for-outstanding-scientific-achievements.html