Andreas Plückthun, PhD

Professor and Director at University of Zurich

Andreas Plückthun, Ph.D., is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Trained in chemistry at the University of Heidelberg, he received his PhD at the University of California at San Diego, was Postdoc at Harvard, group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute in Martinsried, and became then full Professor in Zurich. His research on protein engineering has included pioneering work on antibody engineering, the development of ribosome display, new scaffolds (the DARPin technology and Armadillo Repeat Proteins), engineering of stable G-protein coupled receptors towards high stability, and most recently, a new retargeting platform for gene therapy. He is member of the German Academy of Science (Leopoldina) and recipient of many international awards, including the Anfinsen Award of the Protein Society for "pioneering contributions to protein engineering". His work has been published in 500 papers, which have been cited over 50,000 times. He co-founded four successful biotech companies: Morphosys, Molecular Partners,  G7 Therapeutics (fused with Heptares/Sosei) and Vector BioPharma.