Georg Speyer House
As a foundation under private law, the Georg-Speyer-Haus is a research facility in the immediate vicinity of the grounds of the University Hospital Frankfurt am Main . Research focuses on improving chemotherapy , specifically the field of clinical testing of new methods of cancer treatment and the treatment of AIDS . At the beginning of April 2006, it caused a sensation outside the medical community after the institute's doctors and scientists managed to successfully carry out gene therapy in humans for the first time in Germany .
Personnel and financial resources
In 2010, the Georg-Speyer-Haus employed around 100 people. The basic funding is provided in equal parts from federal funds and funds from the State of Hesse, plus project funds from research funding institutions, research and development contracts, income from the foundation capital and donations. The annual budget is around 8.5 million euros.
The director of the institute has been the physician Florian Greten since August 1, 2013 , who is responsible for the foundation's board of directors. The Georg-Speyer-Haus is linked to the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University by a cooperation agreement.
Research areas
Today, as at the time it was founded, the Georg-Speyer-Haus is concerned with two research topics: on the one hand, the development and control of tumors , and on the other hand, the control of infections . In the field of tumor biology, the mechanisms of regulation of cell growth and cell differentiation as well as the differences in signal transmission between tumor cells and normal cells are investigated. In the field of infection biology, the immunotherapy of HIV infection with the help of genetically modified cells is being investigated, as well as approaches to molecular therapy for diseases of the blood system .
At the beginning of April 2006 the institute announced that it had successfully applied gene therapy to humans. Two patients with septic granulomatosis had their own genetically modified hematopoietic stem cells transferred, which were still fully functional in the body 18 months after the procedure (for details see Septic Granulomatosis # Gene Therapy ).
history
The name of the institute goes back to the banker Georg Speyer (1835–1902), owner of the Frankfurt bank Lazard Speyer-Ellissen and member of the German-Jewish entrepreneurial family Speyer . From his fortune, he donated the then enormous sum of one million gold marks in 1901 and thus laid the financial foundation for the Georg and Franziska Speyer'sche Studienstiftung for the “care of science and higher scientific teaching”. Major parts of the University of Frankfurt later emerged from this foundation .
After his death, his widow Franziska Speyer decided to donate another million gold marks to found a Georg-Speyer-Haus : an “ Academy for Practical Medicine ” was to be set up on the grounds of the municipal hospital . After the founding took longer, Ludwig Darmstaedter convinced the founder to change her plan and instead support Paul Ehrlich 's research. He had already been in Berlin since 1896 and in Frankfurt am Main a. a. researched the chemotherapeutic treatment of infectious diseases and cancer. In Frankfurt he headed the Royal Institute for Experimental Therapy , which was also entrusted with the state control of the medicinal sera on the market (and which later became the Paul Ehrlich Institute ).
In 1905, the Lord Mayor of Frankfurt, Franz Adickes, made building land available free of charge to the founder, Franziska Speyer, for the planned institute, which after its completion became the property of the city and is maintained by the city to this day. On September 3, 1906, the Georg-Speyer-Haus was officially opened and handed over to its first director, Paul Ehrlich. After Ehrlich developed arsphenamine for the treatment of syphilis in 1909 , the royalties went to the foundation to further promote research. In 1908 Paul Ehrlich received the Nobel Prize for Medicine .
In 1935 all of Paul Ehrlich's writings were removed from the institute's library by the National Socialists , and in 1938 the institute was renamed the Research Institute for Chemotherapy in order to also eliminate the name of the Jewish family that founded it.
In 1945 the institute, which was badly damaged in the war, was given its ancestral name again: Chemotherapeutisches Forschungsinstitut Georg-Speyer-Haus . However, by 1949 the foundation's assets shrank from 10 million marks before the currency reform to only 130,000 marks. It was not until 1950 that the institute was financed jointly by the federal states through the so-called Königstein Agreement . The most prominent director of the institute after the war was Niels Kaj Jerne , who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1984.
In 1986 the Georg-Speyer-Haus separated from the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, which led to a collapse in research funds. Under Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff (1987 to 1993 managing director) the focus was on HIV research and for the first time in Germany it was possible to isolate HIV strains and characterize different variants, which led to research funding that was crucial for the survival of the institute.
Coordinates: 50 ° 5 ′ 44.3 " N , 8 ° 39 ′ 56.7" E
Web links
- www.georg-speyer-haus.de
- Jörn Bender: Ehrlich's Frankfurt research facility is 100 years old. dpa message from January 13, 2006, on: rhein-main.net , accessed on October 6, 2015
Individual evidence
- ↑ Georg-Speyer-Haus: Annual Report 2014 , p. 75, full text (PDF)
- ^ Georg-Speyer-Haus, organizational chart , accessed on October 6, 2015
- ^ Biography Rübsamen-Schaeff , Hessen Portal