Andreas Plückthun (born May 7, 1956) is a scientist whose research is focused on the field of

protein engineering Protein engineering is the process of developing useful or valuable proteins through the design and production of unnatural polypeptides, often by altering amino acid sequences found in nature. It is a young discipline, with much research taking pl ...

. Andreas Plückthun is the director of the department of biochemistry at the

University of Zurich The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...

. Plückthun was appointed to the faculty of the University of Zurich as a Full professor of biochemistry in 1993. Plückthun was group leader at the

Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry The Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (; abbreviated MPIB) is a research institute of the Max Planck Society located in Martinsried, a suburb of Munich. The institute was founded in 1973 by the merger of three formerly independent institute ...

, Germany (1985-1993). He was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 1992, and named a member of the German National Academy of Science (Leopoldina) in 2003. He is cofounder of the biotechnology companies Morphosys (Martinsried, Germany) Molecular Partners AG (Zürich-Schlieren, Switzerland) and G7 Therapeutics. (Zürich-Schlieren, Switzerland). Plückthun is a member of the board directors of the Antibody Society. His work is highly cited in the field of antibody engineering. He has been honoured by a number of international awards.

Biography

Andreas Plückthun was born in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

(Germany) and is married to Ilse Pfitzinger, together they have one daughter. He studied chemistry at the

University of Heidelberg Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is List ...

. He received his PhD degree at the

University of California at San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Sc ...

with Edward Dennis, the title of his dissertation being "The interfacial catalysis of phospholipase A2". He was a post-doctoral fellow at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

with Jeremy Knowles, where he worked on the secretion process of beta-lactamase in ''Escherichia coli''. In 1985, he became group leader at the Gene Center Munich, then located at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried (Germany). In 1993 he was appointed Full Professor of Biochemistry at the

(Switzerland).

Work

His research contributed to enabling the emergence of antibody engineering, notably by the use of ''E. coli'' as an engineering platform and studies on synthetic antibodies which led to the first fully synthetic antibody library. To create a true in vitro protein evolution technology his laboratory developed ribosome display of whole proteins. In his research group Designed Ankyrin Repeat Proteins (DARPins) were created as a robust alternative scaffold for binding proteins (antibody mimetics). DARPins are derived from naturally occurring ankyrin proteins, a protein class that mediates high-affinity protein-protein interactions in nature. DARPins (Designed Ankyrin Repeat Proteins), one of the most common binding proteins in nature and responsible for diverse functions, such as cell signaling and receptor binding. To obtain highly stable

G protein-coupled receptors G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), also known as seven-(pass)-transmembrane domain receptors, 7TM receptors, heptahelical receptors, serpentine receptors, and G protein-linked receptors (GPLR), form a large protein family, group of evoluti ...

that can be used for structural studies and in drug screening, his research group developed new

directed evolution Directed evolution (DE) is a method used in protein engineering that mimics the process of natural selection to steer proteins or nucleic acids toward a user-defined goal. It consists of subjecting a gene to iterative rounds of mutagenesis (cre ...

technologies.

Honors and awards

He won a Young Investigator's Award of the German Chemical Industry Trust (Fonds der chemischen Industrie). In 2000, he received the Karl-Heinz-Beckurts Award (Munich, Germany). In 2002 he was given the J. P. Morgan Chase Health Award (San Jose, CA, USA), the Wilhelm-Exner Medal (Vienna, Austria) and The Jury's Grand Prix (European Grand Prix for Innovation, Monaco). Together with the other founders of Molecular Partners AG, he received the Swiss Technology Award and the De Vigier Award in 2005. In 2011 he was awarded a Senior Investigator Grant of the European Research Council. He is the recipient of the 2016 Christian B. Anfinsen Award.

Appearances

In December 2018, Plückthun spoke at the 'Antibody Engineering and Therapeutics' conference in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

References

External links

The Plückthun LabList of publications Andreas Plückthun

Publication list A. Plückthun
ResearchGate
Department of Biochemistry, University of ZurichUniversity of ZurichMorphosys AGMolecular Partners AGG7 TherapeuticsAntibody SocietyGoogle Scholar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pluckthun, Andreas Swiss biochemists Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization University of California, San Diego alumni Studienstiftung alumni 1956 births German biochemists Scientists from Heidelberg Academic staff of the University of Zurich Heidelberg University alumni Living people