Erich Wanker

Erich Wanker leads the research group of Neuroproteomics at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin-Buch and is Professor of Molecular Medicine at Charité University Medicine Berlin. He first discovered Huntington’s disease to be connected to the deposition of protein aggregates, a finding that placed the disorder among the amyloid diseases together with Alzheimer and Parkinson. He belongs to the leading international experts in protein misfolding and protein-protein interaction research. He is author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications and recipient of the James Heineman Research Award and the Erwin Schrödinger Prize. After his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Technology Graz in 1992, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles and group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. His research focus is on the relationships between proteins, small molecules and disease mechanisms.