Two m4 Awards in biomedicine for LMU researchers

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Two LMU researchers have been chosen by the Bavarian Ministry of Economics to receive the m4 Award 2021. The projects selected each receive 500,000 euros in funding over a period of 2 years. This year, the areas designated for consideration were the development of novel materials, and preventive measures and diagnostic methods in the field of biomedicine.

LMU's Professor Andreas Ladurner, who holds the Chair of Physiological Chemistry at LMU, receives the award for his SugarSwitch Therapeutics project. Together with his research group at the LMU Biomedical Center in Martinsried, he will develop novel low-molecular-weight compounds for the treatment of diabetes, which are designed to target a specific transcription factor involved in the regulation of carbohydrate and fat metabolism.

A second m4 Award goes to Professor Jürgen Bernhagen, holder of the Chair of Vascular Biology at LMU. His research team is working on a new class of drugs for the treatment of atherosclerosis, in collaboration with Professor Aphrodite Kapurniotu‘s group at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In their ‘SELECKREM’ project, they want to develop synthetic compounds that inhibit the interaction of pro-inflammatory chemokines with their receptors. The therapeutic aim is to decrease the remaining inflammation risk in patients being treated with drugs that reduce levels of circulating lipids.

The m4 Awards program was set up by the State of Bavaria with the aim of supporting research-based spin-off projects in biomedicine that are currently under development in universities and other research establishments. The five projects devoted to the development of novel pharmaceutical agents receive a total of 2.5 million euros. The prizes are awarded every two years to five researchers.