Thanks to His Research Hepati­tis C is Now Curable

Award of the Hector Stiftung goes to Prof. Dr. Ralf Barten­schlager from Heidelberg

HEIDELBERG/WEINHEIM. Prof. Dr. Ralf Barten­schlager (Univer­sity of Heidel­berg) received the Hector Science Award of the Hector Stiftung for his great achieve­ments in the medical funda­men­tal research. Thanks to his work with hepati­tis C, more than 95 percent of the patients are curable. Further­more, his team has highly contributed to the research of the dengue fever, the world’s most infec­tious mosquito-borne disease.

There­sia Bauer empha­sized in the lauda­tion for Prof. Dr. Barten­schlager, besides his high scien­tific perfor­mance, the positive impact he has on the students for funda­men­tal research.

In 1999, Prof. Dr. Barten­schlager achieved repli­cat­ing the hepati­tis C virus in a labora­tory. This was a crucial success in the research of the virus, since now his team was able to study the factors of the repro­duc­tion of the hepati­tis C virus and deter­mine which substances inhibit the repro­duc­tion cycle. His current focus lies in the devel­op­ment of a vaccine for hepati­tis C. Besides this, his work led to new findings about chron­i­cal infec­tions with other viruses like the hepati­tis B virus.