Director
of the Tumor Immunology Programme, German Cancer
Research Center [DKFZ], Heidelberg, Germany
Prof. Dr.med. Peter H. Krammer was born in Rheydt,
Rhineland, Germany. He received his medical training
in Freiburg, Germany, St. Louis, USA, and Lausanne,
Switzerland. He did his thesis on extracellular
streptococcus antigens at the Institute for Microbiology
and Hygiene at the University of Freiburg, and investigated
the role of small nuclear RNAs at the Institute
of Pathology, also in Freiburg. In 1973, at the
age of 27, he became a member of the Basel Institute
for Immunology and spent almost three fruitful years
at the Institute studying T cells and their specificity.
From Basel, he moved via the Max-Planck-Institute
for Immunobiology in Freiburg, where he stayed one
year to continue T cells studies, to Heidelberg
to the German Cancer Research Center, where in 1976
he started his work in the Division of Immunogenetics.
There, again, his main work was on T cells and T
cell clones, their receptor specificities and their
activities. Later, in the early 1980s, he focused
on T cell-derived cytokines. He investigated the
activation of macrophages by macrophage activating
factors and in a fruitful, longstanding collaboration
with E. Vitetta and her associates from Dallas,
discovered IL-4 as a B cell immunoglobulin switch
factor. With fondness he remembers his days as a
visiting professor in Dallas and the friendliness
of the Texans who hosted his stay. In 1984/85, he
felt that molecular biology would leave a significant
mark on immunology and he spent one and a half years
in A. SippelĘs laboratory at the Center for Molecular
Biology in Heidelberg to learn the thinking and
the techniques in this field. In the mid-to-late
1980s, his interest shifted very much towards negative
regulation of tumor cell growth and apoptosis. In
this context he and his associates discovered the
CD95[APO-1/Fas] system, highlighted by the first
publication in Science in 1989. CD95, its signalling
machinery and its role in physiology and diseases
remained at the center of his interest. Peter Krammer
has received numerous prizes for his work and is
a reviewer for and serves on the editorial board
of many journals. Presently, he is the Director
of the Tumor Immunology Program of the German Cancer
Research Center. He runs a large group of scientists
and his main interest is sensitivity and resistance
in apoptosis and the role of apoptosis in the immune
system and in diseases. |
