German chemist wins prize for promising chemotherapy research

 

BERLIN – The 31-year-old German chemist Johannes Karges will be awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for Young Scientists for 2024, the foundation announced on Tuesday.

Karges’s research might drastically reduce the side effects of chemotherapy for cancer treatment and significantly increase its effectiveness, according to the Paul Ehrlich Foundation, which grants the prize.

Karges leads a research group at the Ruhr University Bochum in western Germany.
The prize is awarded for outstanding achievements in biomedical research. The prize money of €60,000 ($65,000) must be used for research-related purposes.

The award will be presented together with the main prize on March 14 in the historic St Paul’s Church in Frankfurt.

The chemist’s work focuses on chemotherapies against cancer, which involves the use of cytostatic drugs that prevent cancer cells from dividing and therefore stops them from multiplying in number.

Because the drugs also inhibit the division of healthy body cells, they are associated with serious side effects.

The question is how to selectively activate cytostatic drugs.

Karge’s answer is nanoparticles that are too large to penetrate healthy tissue but small enough to squeeze between cancer cells. The nanoparticles are equipped with built-in receivers that are activated by light signals.

“For a long time, people have therefore been looking for a way to make these cytostatic drugs only work in the cancer cells they are supposed to destroy,” the foundation said in a press release announcing the award.

The statement likened better-targeted drugs to “magic bullets” that could “only cure the disease without harming the rest of the body.”

Together with his Chinese research partner, Karges has successfully tested two mixtures that can be detonated by these “time fuses” in cancer cells, according to the foundation.