Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff, chemist and virologist, Founder and Member of the Supervisory Board of AiCuris GmbH & Co. KG, Wuppertal, Germany, celebrates her 75th birthday on January 13, 2024.

Rübsamen-Schaeff has performed important research on infectious diseases and the development of antiviral drugs and antibiotics. She is particularly interested in researching and developing antiviral medications (e.g., against herpes viruses, cytomegalovirus, HIV, and hepatitis B) as well as new antibiotics against multi-resistant pathogens. She has also investigated oncogenic viruses, i.e., viruses that can cause cancer. She was the first to isolate HIV strains from patients in Germany and worked on the classification of HIV variants, HIV tests, and HIV drug development. The biopharmaceutical company AiCuris, which she founded, aims to develop new drugs against viruses and multi-resistant bacteria and has brought a drug against cytomegalovirus (Prevymis®) to market in 2017/2018.

 

Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff studied chemistry at the University of Münster, Germany, where she received her Ph.D. in 1973. She performed postdoctoral research at the University of Münster, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, and the University of Gießen, Germany. In 1982, she became the Head of the Department for Immune Therapy at the Chemotherapeutic Research Institute Georg-Speyer-Haus, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She completed her habilitation in 1983 and served as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1983 and 1985.

From 1987 to 1993, Rübsamen-Schaeff served as Scientific and Managing Director at the Chemotherapeutic Research Institute Georg-Speyer-Haus, and in 1988, she became Professor of Biochemistry and Virology at the University of Frankfurt am Main. From 1994 to 2001, she was the Head of Antiviral Research at Bayer AG, Leverkusen, Germany, and from 2001 to 2006, she served as Senior Vice-President for Anti-Infective Research at Bayer AG. In 2006, she founded AiCuris, where she served as CEO until 2015, when she became Chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Board of the company. Since 2021, she has served as a Member of the Supervisory Board of AiCuris.

In addition to other honors, Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff has received the Cross of Merit 1st Class from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1995, the Mestemacher Prize in 2004, the 2015 Distinguished Woman in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Award from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the 2018 German Future Prize (the German Federal President’s Prize for Technology and Innovation), and the Loeffler Frosch Medal from the German Society for Virology (GfV) in 2020. She is a Member of the GfV, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), as well as an Honorary Member of the German Chemical Society (GDCh).

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Selected Publications

• First‐in‐Human, Single‐ and Multiple‐Ascending‐Dose, Food‐Effect, and Absolute Bioavailability Trials to Assess the Pharmacokinetics, Safety, and Tolerability of Pritelivir, a Nonnucleoside Helicase‐Primase Inhibitor Against Herpes Simplex Virus in Healthy Subjects,
  Dirk Kropeit, Susanne Bonsmann, Oliver von Richter, David McCormick, Jörg Pausch, Melanie Sumner, Alexander Birkmann, Holger Zimmermann, Helga Rübsamen‐Schaeff,
  Clin. Pharmacol. Drug Dev. 2023, 12, 749–760.
  https://doi.org/10.1002/cpdd.1241
• Overcoming fragmentation of health research in Europe: lessons from COVID-19,
  Karin R. Sipido, Fernando Antoñanzas, Julio Celis, Laurent Degos, Richard Frackowiak, Valentin Fuster, Detlev Ganten, Steffen Gay, Hans Hofstraat, Stephen T. Holgate, Gabriel Krestin, Michael Manns, Francoise Meunier, Wolfgang Oertel, Susanna Palkonen, Dainius Pavalkis, Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff, Ulf Smith, Bente Merete Stallknecht, Tomáš Zima,
  Lancet 2020, 395, 1970–1971.
  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31411-2
• From academic research to founding a company: the story of AiCuris,
  Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff,
  Pure Appl. Chem. 2019, 91, 717–728.
  https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2018-1105
• Letermovir for Cytomegalovirus Prophylaxis in Hematopoietic-Cell Transplantation,
  Roy F. Chemaly, Andrew J. Ullmann, Susanne Stoelben, Marie Paule Richard, Martin Bornhäuser, Christoph Groth, Hermann Einsele, Margarida Silverman, Kathleen M. Mullane, Janice Brown, Horst Nowak, Katrin Kölling, Hans P. Stobernack, Peter Lischka, Holger Zimmermann, Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff, Richard E. Champlin, Gerhard Ehninger,
  N. Eng. J. Med. 2014, 370, 1781–1789.
  https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1309533
• First Report of Successful Treatment of Multidrug-Resistant Cytomegalovirus Disease with the Novel Anti-CMV Compound AIC246,
  D. R. Kaul, S. Stoelben, E. Cober, T. Ojo, E. Sandusky, P. Lischka, H. Zimmermann, H. Rübsamen-Schaeff,
  Am. J. Transplant. 2011, 11, 1079–1084.
  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-6143.2011.03530.x
• Structures of ClpP in complex with acyldepsipeptide antibiotics reveal its activation mechanism,
  Byung-Gil Lee, Eun Young Park, Kyung-Eun Lee, Hyesung Jeon, Kwang Hoon Sung, Holger Paulsen, Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff, Heike Brötz-Oesterhelt, Hyun Kyu Song,
  Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 2010, 17, 471–478.
  https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.1787

 

Also of Interest

• IUPAC Honors Distinguished Women in Chemistry,
  ChemistryViews 2015.
  Awards program aims to promote the work of women chemists and chemical engineers worldwide