Special Lecture

Deciphering cancer metabolism by NMR

Prof. Ulrich Günther

Ulrich Günther graduated from the University of Tübingen where he also completed his PhD under supervision of Klaus Albert about “Localisation Methods for 19F-in vivo NMR spectroscopy”. He has since worked in the field of Nuclear Magnetic Spectroscopy (NMR). Following his PhD he spent 4 years at Tufts School of Medicine, supported by a fellowship of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, working with William Bachovchin and later with Brian Schaffhausen, first focussing on small molecule structures of boronic acid inhibitors (Val-boroPro, Talabostat), and later on protein ligand interactions. In 1996 he moved to Frankfurt supported by a fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to work at the BMRZ NMR centre, continuing work on protein ligand binding in the group of Prof Heinz Rüterjans, where he completed a Habilitation in 2001. Using line shape analysis to derive the kinetic mechanism of protein ligand binding has been one of his key interests for many years. This work revealed mechanisms where slow rearrangements in proteins are triggered by the interaction with small molecules. In 2004 he became Scientific Director of HWB-NMR and in 2010 Professor of Biophysical Chemistry. He helped to shape the HWB-NMR facility as a leading UK and European NMR centre, with involvements in many European infrastructure and research projects. He enjoys working in a European and international context, and has coined projects such as WordWide-NMR which included NMR centres from across the world, including China, India, and countries in South America, together with several European sites, to exchange staff members and to run joint international workshops around the world. He now runs two EU MarieCurie ITN networks focussed on tracer-based metabolism. In 2018 he won a grant from EPSRC which will fund a 1GHz spectrometer for the HWB-NMR facility. This is part of a £20Million funding initiative which funds GHz spectrometers in Birmingham and Warwick along with upgrades for several UK Universities. His current scientific work is primarily oriented towards NMR and cell metabolism, using tracer-based and real-time metabolism, mostly to study metabolic properties of cancers. For this he has developed new NMR based methods.