Dietmar Vestweber
Dietmar Vestweber ( born March 16, 1956 in Wuppertal ) is a German biochemist and cell biologist. As its founding director in 2001, he established the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster. He heads the Department " Vascular Cell Biology ".
Life and work
After studying biochemistry at the Universities of Tübingen and Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried Vestweber research at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen. After receiving his PhD in Zoology (1985 ), he joined as postdoc to the Biozentrum, University of Basel, where in 1990 he completed his habilitation in biochemistry.
In 1990, Vestweber took over the management of a research group at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg in 1994 and followed the offer of a professorship of Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine University of Münster am newly established Center for Molecular Biology of Inflammation ( ZMBE ).
In 1998, Dietmar Vestweber reputation as a director of a department at the former Max Planck Institute for Physiological and Clinical Research, Bad Nauheim, which he accepted in 1999. After a two-year phase in which Vestweber at both institutions in Münster and Bad Nauheim worked, 2001, he was the director of the newly founded Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster.
Research
His research have included three different working areas. He has investigated the molecular basis of cell recognition and cell-cell adhesion between epithelial cells and in mouse pre-implantation embryo in the course of his PhD and (then Uvomorulin ) carried out in the laboratory of Rolf Kemler fundamental work to E- cadherin.
In his time as a postdoc in the group of Gottfried Schatz at the Biozentrum he explored mechanisms of biogenesis of mitochondria and found the first component (now referred to as TOM40 ) of the mitochondrial transport machinery that mediates the transport into proteins in mitochondria.
Since 1990 he has devoted to the study of the regulation of inflammatory processes. In inflammatory processes it comes to migration of immune cells ( leukocytes) from the blood into damaged or infected tissue. Vestwebers working group is studying the mechanisms of cell recognition, cell adhesion and cell migration, which control this process and communicate. It currently mechanisms needed that control the barrier function of the blood vessel wall and the endothelium of blood vessels.
Its about 200 publications have been cited over 14,000 times. His Hirsch index is 58 (as of June 2013).