Frankfurt/Main (dpa) – 31-year-old chemist Johannes Karges will receive the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Young Talent Prize 2024. As the Board of Trustees of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation announced on Tuesday in Frankfurt, her research could significantly reduce the effects Side effects of chemotherapy against cancer and greatly increase its effectiveness.
The award recognizes outstanding achievements in biomedical research. The prize money of €60,000 must be used for research. This honor will be given along with the main prize on March 14 at Paul's Church in Frankfurt.
International career
Karges has an international career. He studied chemistry in Marburg and London. As a doctoral student, he conducted research in Paris and Guangzhou, China. After obtaining his doctorate, he worked in the United States of America. Since the end of 2022, he has been leading his own research group at the Ruhr University Bochum.
His work deals with chemotherapy against cancer. So-called cytostatics are used to prevent cancer cells from dividing. Because they also prevent the body's healthy cells from dividing, they are associated with serious side effects.
“For a long time, people have been looking for a way to allow these inhibitors to work only in the cancer cells that they are supposed to destroy. Then, in Paul Ehrlich’s view, they will be similar to magic balls that only treat the disease. Without Harm the rest of the body. “The research conducted by Johannes Karges and his team has brought this vision to life.”
Remote detonation device for cell inactivation
The question is how to activate cytostatics selectively. Barge's answer is that nanoparticles are too large to penetrate healthy tissue but small enough to squeeze between cancer cells. Nanoparticles have built-in receptors that are activated by optical signals.
Kargis, in collaboration with his Chinese research partner, has successfully tested two mixtures that can be detonated in cancer cells using “temporal detonators,” according to the foundation. The two were able to confirm their findings in cell cultures in experiments on mice. In both cases described, the tumors of animals injected with nanoparticles disappeared almost completely after external irradiation with red light or ultrasound.
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