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Scientific Director of HIPS receives highest award from the German Pharmaceutical Society
Professor Rolf Müller, Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) and Professor of Pharmaceutical Biology at Saarland University, has been awarded the Mannich Medal by the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG). Awarded in honour of the German chemist Carl Mannich, the medal is the DPhG's highest scientific accolade and is presented annually for “outstanding achievements in the field of pharmaceutical sciences”. The medal was presented at the DPhG's annual conference in Freiburg on October 1, 2025. HIPS is a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in collaboration with Saarland University.
Rolf Müller's research focuses on discovering and developing innovative active substances to combat antimicrobial resistance, which is one of the greatest challenges facing modern medicine. He and his team use natural products from soil bacteria, particularly the unusual myxobacteria, as the basis for developing such molecules. Over the course of his career, Müller has established a globally unique program for discovering new myxobacterial strains, leading to the identification of thousands of new bacterial species and numerous new natural products. This collection now comprises over 10,000 different myxobacterial strains, isolated from environmental samples worldwide. Müller and his team characterize the identified natural products in various national and international collaborations, optimizing them for use as active ingredients in the treatment of infectious diseases in humans. To this end, methods from biotechnology, synthetic biology, analytical chemistry, bioinformatics and pharmaceutical sciences are developed and used in combination for drug optimization. Müller's work has been and continues to be supported by numerous international research funding organizations, including the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the European Union, the Helmholtz Association, the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Faber Foundation and numerous pharmaceutical companies. Alongside basic research, Müller takes a strongly translational approach to translate the results into medically useful drugs and applications.
Rolf Müller received his doctorate in pharmaceutical biology from the University of Bonn in 1994, and also qualified as a pharmacist there. He then spent two years conducting research at the University of Washington in Seattle. He habilitated at the TU Braunschweig in 2000 and, in 2003, accepted a professorship in pharmaceutical biochemistry at Saarland University. That same year, he received the BioFuture Prize from the BMBF. Since 2008, Müller has played a key role in establishing and expanding HIPS, where he has served as Scientific Director since 2009. HIPS is currently the only non-university research institute in Germany dedicated to pharmaceutical research. In 2021, Rolf Müller was awarded the Leibniz Prize by the DFG.
This press release is also available on our website: https://www.helmholtz-hzi.de/en/media-center/newsroom/news-detail/mannich-medal-...
Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research:
Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and its other sites in Germany are engaged in the study of bacterial and viral infections and the body’s defence mechanisms. They have a profound expertise in natural compound research and its exploitation as a valuable source for novel anti-infectives. As member of the Helmholtz Association and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) the HZI performs translational research laying the ground for the development of new treatments and vaccines against infectious diseases. https://www.helmholtz-hzi.de/en
Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland:
The Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) in Saarbrücken was founded jointly by the HZI and Saarland University in 2009. Scientists at HIPS develop and employ experimental and computational approaches to provide new active substances against infectious diseases, optimise them for use in humans and investigate how they can best be transported to their site of action in the human body. A special focus of the institute is on microbial natural products from soil bacteria and the human microbiota as well as innovative medicinal chemistry-driven approaches. https://www.helmholtz-hips.de
Contact at HIPS:
Dr. Yannic Nonnenmacher
Scientific Strategy Officer
Phone +49 681 98806 4500
yannic.nonnenmacher@helmholtz-hips.de
Prof. Rolf Müller, winner of the Mannich Medal of the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG)
Source: Oliver Dietze
Copyright: HIPS/Dietze
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