Jochen Guck: An outsider’s path to the central nervous system
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- Jochen Guck is a Professor of Cellular Machines at the Biotechnology Center of the Technical University of Dresden. Quelle: David Ausserhofer/Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
22.08.2012 -
Few would have guessed that Jochen Guck could become a specialist in the mechanical properties of cells and tissues, not least Guck himself: “At school, I dropped out of biology as quickly as I could,” says the native of Lower Franconia. Today, this originally less-than-keen biology student counts as “one of the world's best and most innovative researchers in the field of biophysics.” These are the words of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which – aided by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research – will provide the 39-year-old with five million euros over the next five years for Guck’s Humboldt Professorship at the Biotechnology Center of the TU Dresden. Working at the banks of the Elbe, the versatile Guck will be occupied among other things with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and the growth of nerve cells.
Jochen Guck’s unlikely journey in biology began with an innocuous question that was put forward by the German Professor Josef Käs at the University of Texas in Austin. After graduating at university, the physics student set off to the United States for one year to prepare for his masters degree and to tackle this same question. The one year became five. The question around which his masters degree centred turned out to be simply “extremely interesting” says Guck today. Specifically, this concerned the somewhat exotic issue of whether cells become deformed when they are irradiated by lasers from both sides. Many assumed that nothing happens; others thought that they become slightly compressed. Guck pricked his finger and began to subject his own blood cells to the laser treatment. His results surprised everyone: Against all expectations, the cells were pulled apart by the laser. “When we wanted to publish the results, the first reaction was that our results must be wrong,” he recalls.
Cancer cells are softer
But the student from Germany did more than just convince the sceptical establishment; in his subsequent thesis he also proved why the outcome could only take this form. The ‘Optical Stretcher’ had been invented; in the meantime, Guck has discovered other interesting applications for his device. For example, because they are ‘soft’, cancer cells can be pulled apart more easily than normal cells. This advantage helps the disease to spread through the body. “I mean, you can’t get a tennis ball through a keyhole,” says Guck. In the meantime, he has discovered that the cells are softer when the cancer is more aggressive. The result is a new approach to diagnosis. To further develop the process, which could be suitable for example for the identification of stem cells, Guck will be working in Dresden with help of a starting grant from the European Research Council. On top of this, he has now been granted a Humboldt Professorship.
Looking back, it was by no means inevitable that his career would take this path happen. Guck nearly decided to settle down permanently in the US. “I had a great time in Texas,” he says. 300 days of sunshine, the liberal climate in Austin and a good local music scene all played their part in his contentment. Added to this was the promising biotech start-up in which he was involved. This happy scene was then interrupted by a number of events. The dot-com crash – which also claimed his company – the election of George Bush as US President, and then 11 September 2001. “I had numerous foreign research colleagues who suddenly had problems with re-entry,” he says. “The situation had changed, and I didn’t like Bush.”
Jochen Guck entdeckte, dass die Müllerzellen des Auges das eintreffende Licht wie Glasfaserkabel zu den Rezeptorzellen weiterleiten.
Fibre optic cables in the body
Guck opted to change his situation and followed his mentor Josef Käs to the University of Leipzig. There, following a casual conversation with a colleague, he discovered his second major area of research: the eye. It's actually a bad design,” says Guck. The receptors are located right at the back, at the base of the retina. To reach the receptors, incident light must first pass through a thick layer of other cells. How does it manage this? Guck was able to prove that the so-called Müller cells are in fact living fibre-optic cables. This scientific thunderbolt won him the 2008 Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. By this time, however, Guck was on the other side of the Atlantic in Leipzig. “If the University of Cambridge puts out a call to work at the Cavendish laboratory, then it’s hard to resist.” In its announcement, the university said that it wanted to go back to the glory days of James Watson and Francis Crick, and their discovery of the structure of DNA. In England, Guck began work on his third major theme, which featured yet another unresolved question at the outset. Why do nerve cells form scar tissue around foreign bodies such as electrodes? Guck believes it is due to the stiffness of the electrodes, which is unknown to the body. To make his point, he draws a very British comparison. “Normally, the environment around nerve cells is about as soft as cream cheese.” That certainly can’t be said of electrodes made of metal. Guck has found a further indication that nerve cells in multiple sclerosis respond to the mechanical properties of their environment. In the course of MS, the axons lose their protective coating. If all goes well, the brain has the capability to replicate this protective layer, the so-called myelin. Guck now has figured out why this doesn’t always go to plan in MS patients: In the brain, the area surrounding the nerve cells is ‘softer’ than usual as a result of the disease.
Driving nerve cells to growth
The question of the conditions that must be in place for the nervous system to heal itself is the latest area of research for biophysicist, as well as a return to a challenge that has faced Guck every day for over twenty years. Guck is a paraplegic. “It was the 16th August 1990,” he says. On the way home from summer job on a construction site, the driver of the van transporting Guck crashed into a house. Two colleagues were killed; Guck and two others were seriously injured. “I’m very happy that I survived at all.”
His research could now help to find a means of pushing nerve cells to regenerate via the softness of the environment, or by bringing hard scar tissue back to an optimum range. “Some time ago I said that I would be able to run again in ten years,” says Guck. “That’s pretty unlikely to happen” Nevertheless, his injury was “a great incentive to not be limited to basic research, but also to network with other disciplines and to make sure that something emerges in a clinical sense.”
Dresden – a world model
In Dresden, the conditions for this kind of cooperation are better than elsewhere. “The university is a world model for the consistent combination of biology, medicine, engineering and physics,” says the Humboldt Professor. As a physicist in Cambridge, he arrived at the subject “from the outside”, and was above all able to find a sympathetic ear among leading biologists, who know the limits of their discipline. “In Dresden, everybody thinks like this.” One downside: after the flexibility of work in the US and Britain, the native German finds it a struggle to get used to the bureaucracy of life in his homeland. “There, you could sometimes turn a blind eye to procedure if it helped the researchers to do their work.” The reputation of the Humboldt Professorship – a first for Dresden – could be an advantage as he begins his latest phase. The accuracy of the Germans, which sometimes comes across as pedantic, is also ultimately of benefit, thinks Guck. “The students here are highly trained and extremely accurate.” Another asset of Dresden – not to be underestimated – is the food. It's definitely better than in England,” says Guck, laughing.
Eating isn’t always top of the agenda, however – during the week at least, the University is his home. In the evening, he might head off to a beer garden with friends. “You can’t always be thinking about degrees of softness. Maybe only nearly always. Weekends are reserved for the family, and listening to music and cycling are other ways that the scientist finds ways to relax. Throughout, Guck never loses sight of his big goal. “Seeing a method that we have developed for the regeneration of nerve cells in the clinic would be a real thrill.” And he adds, with no trace of modesty: “A robust cure for paraplegia – that would be my dream.”
Christoph Mayerl
