Prof. Marcus Conrad from Helmholtz Munich has been awarded the Paul Martini Prize for findings on ferroptosis, a special form of cellular self-destruction that could point the way to new drugs for cancer therapy and organ transplants. The prize is awarded annually by the Paul Martini Foundation, Berlin, for outstanding achievements in clinical-therapeutic drug research. It is endowed with 50,000 euros.
Prof. Marcus Conrad is Director of the Institute of Metabolism and Cell Death at Helmholtz Munich and has also been a professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) since October 2024. He has discovered that cells are always ready to undergo ferroptosis, but are usually prevented from doing so by one or more inhibitors: These include the enzyme glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4) and the “ferroptosis suppressor protein 1”, or FSP1 for short.
Conrad played a decisive role in the discovery of ferroptosis. Since then, he has dedicated himself to the increasingly detailed elucidation of its process and its connections to other processes in the body. Ferroptosis is one of the various types of cellular self-destruction, in which individual cells in multicellular organisms “sacrifice” themselves in certain situations in favor of the vital possibilities of the organism as a whole. Iron ions play an important role in this process.
Ferroptosis plays a negative role in several medical fields: for example, it leads to tissue damage if the oxygen supply is temporarily interrupted, for example during an organ transplant, a stroke or a heart attack. It is also involved in the development of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Conrad therefore developed the first ferroptosis inhibitor that was effective in vivo back in the 2010s.
However, ferroptosis is medically desirable if it can be used to eliminate cancer cells. Conrad and his team therefore developed a series of FSP1 inhibitors that make cells susceptible to ferroptosis and can therefore actually reduce tumor growth in in vivo models. They report on these results in two of the award-winning publications. In a third, they show that the experimental antitumor agent Brequinar, developed elsewhere, is also effective as an FSP1 inhibitor at higher concentrations.
In a fourth publication, Conrad and team uncover a further connection: they show that FSP1 indirectly contributes to the formation of coagulation factors, even when their production is severely impaired by overdosed anticoagulants of the vitamin K antagonist type. This points to new possibilities for reducing the risk of bleeding in such therapeutic situations.
Conrad's research is therefore an outstanding example of how basic biomedical research paves the way for translation geared towards unmet therapeutic needs.
Prof. Dr. Stefan Endres, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, explained the awarding of the prize on behalf of the six-member scientific advisory board: "The work is characterized by its high scientific quality, its originality and its translational potential. The research results will open up new possibilities for pharmacotherapy."
The non-profit Paul Martini Foundation, based in Berlin, promotes drug research and research on drug therapy and intensifies the scientific dialog between medical scientists in universities, hospitals, the research-based pharmaceutical industry, other research institutions and representatives of health policy and the authorities.