Gerhard Höfle

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Gerhard Höfle (* 1940 ) is a German natural product chemist and former university professor. He is best known for isolating epothilone from the myxobacterium Sorangium cellulosum .

Life

1968 doctorate Höfle with the work studies the ambivalent behavior of the oxazolone (5) - and Pseudooxazolon- (5) anions and the mechanism of Dakin-West reaction at the Technical University of Munich . In 1975 Höfle completed his habilitation with the thesis Attempts to prepare acyl isocyanides and 13C-NMR-spectroscopic [C-NMR-spectroscopic] investigations of quinones and quinoid natural products at the Technical University of Berlin .

From 1975 Höfle headed the department for natural product chemistry at the Society for Biotechnological Research (GBF) in Braunschweig, later on at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI). In 2005 he retired.

Together with Hans Reichenbach , he systematically examined the secondary metabolites of numerous bacteria, including myxobacteria. In doing so, he discovered the first epothilone , a substance from a group of 16-membered macro lactones, in the myxobacterium Sorangium cellulosum . The substance class has an effect on tumor cells analogous to that of paclitaxel , which is why it is used in cancer research and cancer therapy.

Awards (selection)

Links and references

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Höfle, Norbert Bedorf, Heinrich Steinmetz, Dietmar Schomburg, Klaus Gerth, Hans Reichenbach : Epothilon A and B - novel, 16-membered macrolides with cytotoxic effects: isolation, structure in the crystal and conformation in solution. In: Angewandte Chemie , 1996, 108, pp. 1671-1673; doi: 10.1002 / anie.19961081342 .
  2. ↑ Hannes Schellinger: New active ingredient against cancer. In: Hermann - News of the Helmholtz Association (PDF, 319 kB), December 2007, p. 2.
  3. ↑ Happy Odyssey of Research: From Myxobacterium to Cancer Drug. ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ 2004 award winner from the Karl Heinz Beckurts Foundation (beckurts-stiftung.de); Retrieved April 24, 2014.
  5. ↑ Cancer drug from the compost heap: Myxobacteria researchers from GBF awarded the Beckurts Prize. Press release from December 7, 2004 at the Informationsdienst Wissenschaft (idw-online.de)
  6. ↑ Inhoffen Medal from the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (helmholtz-hzi.de); Retrieved April 24, 2014.
  7. ↑ Member Prof. Dr. Gerhard Höfle. In: badw.de. December 6, 2013, accessed February 24, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Höfle, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German natural product chemist
DATE OF BIRTH 1940