Prof. Dr. Jürgen Ruland - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prizewinner 2021
Immunology, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Ruland
© TUM, Andreas Heddergott
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Ruland
© TUM, Andreas Heddergott
Jürgen Ruland is awarded the Leibniz Prize for his outstanding scientific work in the field of immunology, which has led to a fundamentally new understanding of signal transduction pathways in immune and cancer cells. Ruland is a world-leading immunologist and oncologist who studies healthy signalling processes in the immune system and those that are deregulated in disease. With his research group, he investigates how immune cells recognise pathogens, initiate immune defence and how pathologically deregulated signals in blood cells lead to the development of cancer. He also succeeded in elucidating the molecular recognition of fungi by the so-called dectin receptors of the immune system and their signalling processes. These fundamental findings are important in the diagnosis of immunodeficiency and the therapy of oncological diseases. Ruland's work impressively illuminates how insights from pathology and oncology can lay the foundations for deciphering fundamental mechanisms of the physiology of the immune system.
After completing his doctorate in 1996 at the Institute of Pharmacology at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Jürgen Ruland initially worked at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto. In 2003, he moved to TU Munich as a clinical and research assistant. In 2010 he became professor and director of the newly founded Institute for Molecular Immunology there, and in 2012 director of the Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Pathobiochemistry at Klinikum rechts der Isar. Since 2018, Ruland has been spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Centre “Aberrant Immune Signalling in Cancer”. He received an ERC Advanced Grant in 2013 and 2019.