Hessian state program provides €3 million in funding for LOEWE top professorship at Goethe University Frankfurt
Prof. Ivan Đikić, an expert in endogenous quality control mechanisms and their therapeutic use, has been awarded a top LOEWE professorship at Goethe University Frankfurt. The state of Hesse’s LOEWE research funding program will make available €3 million over a period of five years for the development of novel drugs that break down disease-relevant proteins in the body in a targeted manner.
Leibniz Prize Winner
“Prof. Đikić is one of the most cited researchers in the life sciences, and is internationally renowned. His scientific work has received numerous awards – including the Leibniz Prize. He has already succeeded three times in acquiring one of the European Research Council’s coveted Advanced Grants,” said Hessian Science Minister Timon Gremmels, adding that, “Prof. Đikić’s research activities are not only greatly important for Frankfurt’s strategic profiling, but also for interdisciplinary networking in the field of research into the causes of and treatment options for diseases like cancer.”
Focus on active substances against cancer
Prof. Đikić’s laboratory pursues a promising approach to developing innovative and efficient drugs, with the LOEWE top professorship honing in on the development of active substances against cancer. The focus lies on so-called ProxiDrugs (proximity-inducing drugs), which enable the targeted degradation of disease-relevant proteins in the cell. This opens up new therapeutic options for a variety of diseases, including those previously considered untreatable. In the cell, protein degradation is primarily controlled by the ubiquitin system, within which the small protein ubiquitin is linked to another protein as part of a precisely regulated process, which is then marked for degradation. The pharmacological reprogramming of this machinery enables the targeted degradation of unwanted, disease-relevant proteins.
Goethe University President Prof. Enrico Schleiff: “Prof. Đikić and his multidisciplinary team are researching the molecular basis of life to discover pathological changes that lead to the development of human diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration and infections. His research on ProxiDrugs is essential in the fight against cancer. We are delighted that, with the support of the state of Hesse and the LOEWE top professorship, we can continue to keep this renowned and esteemed researcher at Goethe University.”
Ivan Đikić studied medicine at the University of Zagreb, obtained his doctorate at New York University and then founded his first independent group at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Uppsala. He was appointed to Goethe University Frankfurt in 2002, where he has served as director of the Institute of Biochemistry II since 2009. From 2009 to 2013, he was founding director of the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences. In 2018, Đikić was appointed a fellow of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt. He is co-founder and board member of the LOEWE Center Frankfurt Cancer Institute, spokesperson of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research-funded future cluster PROXIDRUGS and the German Research Foundation-funded Collaborative Research Center 1177 on selective autophagy as well as co-spokesperson of the ENABLE cluster project. His biomedical research has been honored with numerous awards, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2013. He is an elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
What are LOEWE professorships?
LOEWE top professorships provide excellent, internationally recognized researchers with an endowment between €1.5 and 3 million for five years.
LOEWE Start Professorships offer up to €2 million in funding and are aimed at excellent researchers at an early stage of their career, who are recruited or retained in the state of Hesse for a period of six years.
LOEWE Transfer Professorships, which are currently in the pilot phase, support researchers in further developing application-oriented results in exchange with partners from practice in a manner that allows these results to successfully contribute to solving social, cultural or economic issues. The funding amounts to up to €1 million to endow a professorship for five years.
Source: Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Arts and Culture, October 21, 2024
