Andreas Pluckthun PhD

Andreas Plückthun is German and was born in Heidelberg. He began his studies of Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg and obtained his PhD from the University of California in San Diego. As a postdoctoral fellow he worked at the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. After spending 7 years in the USA, Andreas Plückthun returned to Germany and became group leader at the Gene Center of the University of Munich and at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. He joined the Department of Biochemistry in 1993 as a Full Professor. He received several awards for his research focused on protein engineering and directed evolution, especially of antibodies, engineered binding molecules and membrane proteins. He is co-founder of the two spin-off companies Morphosys (now 400 employees) and Molecular Partners (now about 70 employees) both of which are very successful.