Mathias Heikenwalder MD, PhD

Prof. Heikenwalder (1976) and his group investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms that lead to chronic inflammation, tissue damage, cancer, and metastasis. In tight collaboration with clinics, he is working on new models and therapy approaches. Prof. Heikenwalder studied microbiology in Vienna. After a two-year research trip at the Max-Delbrück-Zentrum for medicine in Berlin graduated in 1999 with the highest honors. He started his doctoral thesis at the institute of Neuropathology in Zurich and successfully graduated in 2004 in the field of prion diseases. 

After his habilitation at the medical faculty of the Universitatsspital Zürich, he received 2007 a Max-Cloetta-Professorship and started his work as a group leader with a research focus on "inflammation and cancer". In the year 2010he became a junior professor at the TUM as well as a group leader at the Institute for Virology at the Helmholtz Zentrum in Munich. Since 2015 Prof. Heikenwalder has been a group leader in the division F180 „chronic inflammation and cancer" at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg.