Inhalt

Peter Seeberger

Professor of Organic Chemistry at Freie Universität Berlin; Director of the Department of Biomolecular Systems, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany

Breaking the Wall of Expensive Vaccines. How Automated Carbohydrate Chemistry Can Save A Life for One Euro.

In a world threatened by infectious diseases, how can we make vaccines

more affordable? The key is already in our hands – or rather, on our cells. If we want to understand the workings of the immune responses of our bodies we need to decode molecules: oligosaccharides, to be precise, which carry such information in their structure. Combining synthetic organic chemistry and immunology, Peter H. Seeberger (1966) examines the biochemical basis to identify sugars to accelerate the development of inexpensive vaccines. Seeberger, who, after many years as a professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) and at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH), recently became director at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and professor at Freie Universität Berlin. He serves as a founding member on the board of “Hope for Africa”, a non-governmental foundation that aims at improving

health care in Ethiopia and on the Board of Ancora Pharmaceuticals, a spinn-off company that facilitates the major step to break the deadlock of expensive and exclusory health protection.

In a world threatened by infectious diseases, how can we make vaccines more affordable? The key is already in our hands – or rather, on our cells. If we want to understand the workings of the immune responses of our bodies we need to decode molecules: oligosaccharides, to be precise, which carry such information in their structure. Combining synthetic organic chemistry and immunology, Peter H. Seeberger (1966) examines the biochemical basis to identify sugars to accelerate the development of inexpensive vaccines. Seeberger, who, after many years as a professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) and at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH), recently became director at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and professor at Freie Universität Berlin. He serves as a founding member on the board of “Hope for Africa”, a non-governmental foundation that aims at improving health care in Ethiopia and on the Board of Ancora Pharmaceuticals, a spinn-off company that facilitates the major Stepp to break the deadlock of expensive and exclusory health protection.

www.mpikg-golm.mpg.de/Biomolekulare_Systeme