Peter Seeberger: Sweet attack on malaria

<ic:message key='Bild vergrößern' />

Peter Seeberger, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Federal Institute of Technology Zürich. Quelle: ETH Zürich

10.09.2007  - 

When Peter Seeberger is confronted with a problem, he grapples with it until it’s solved. In this way the 38 year old German has already achieved a great deal. At one time, the graduate of Chemistry aspired to attain a doctorate at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zuerich, Switzerland. Now, he holds there the Chair as Professor for Organic Chemistry and is considered an expert in the field of the synthetic manufacturing of sugar compounds. With this, Seeberger hopes to make gains in the field of medicine: for example with a vaccine against the tropical disease malaria.Now, Seeberger was honoured for his achievements with the 2007 Körber Prize. The official ceremony for the 750,000-euro award  took place on 7 September in Hamburg.

From the beginning, the career of the Chemistry professor has run an unusual course. Specifically, he isn’t able to produce a degree-certificate from Germany. “That’s been put on hold”, he says. In the early 1990’s, after six semesters studying Chemistry in Erlangen, the young scientist moved to Colorado, USA, on a Fulbright Scholarship. A good place to study for a year, or so he thought. He ended up staying for 13 years. “The first three months were tough. I had to get used to the language, and catch up on a lot of studies because I had changed over to the graduate program of biochemistry”, remembers Seeberger. His exam results during the first semester were lower than he was used to, but he didn’t give up, and by the second semester the young German was ranked among the best students. Finally, his German studies were abandoned, in favor of an academic career in the US.

Mass-producing synthetic sugar molecules

At that time, Seeberger was already concentrating on the synthetic production of proteins and nucleic acids. “I found the biological perspectives within chemistry more interesting”, says the researcher today. In the meantime, Seeberger’s work has enabled the continual progression of the analysis of sugar and the understanding of its role in the human body. Following Colorado he began a post-doctoral residency at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, before finally moving to the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge as an Assistant Professor. There, during the late 90’s, he developed an automated oligosaccharide synthesizer which is able to artificially manufacture complex sugar molecules 500 times faster than was previously possible.

To isolate sugars from natural sources is extremely difficult as the molecules are only present in small quantities. The chemical production of Glykane is the only alternative, although it’s tricky. “Sugar molecules don’t form long chains, like proteins for example, but tend to branch out quite intricately”, explains Seeberger. In earlier times it was necessary to undertake a doctorate in order to artificially manufacture a sugar. With his automated synthesizer it’s a matter of around 24 hours, a development that has revolutionised the world of sugar research, the area of so-called glycomics. The equipment cannot manufacture every imaginable sugar molecule, but a very large proportion nevertheless. “I built on the knowledge and work achieved in DNA-synthesis”, says Seeberger, referring to the productive co-operation with his Doctoral Supervisor Marvin Caruthers, who co-developed the technology for the synthesis of genetic materials in the 1980’s.

Revolution resembling an old Volkswagen beetle

Seebergers machine does not look entirely unlike a converted Volkswagen beetle: In an earlier incarnation, the apparatus had been used to join amino acids to proteins. After changes made by the researchers, this old equipment now constructs complex sugar molecules, component by component. Beforehand, Seeberger chemically prepares these components in such a way that they are able to steer themselves into the correct position and connect with other components. In the machine, these prepared components then react with one another in successive stages. "If we feed the robot the sugars in the correct order, then the intended chain emerges almost on its own ", explains Seeberger.

Succesful Sugar-based Immunisation of Mice

For Seeberger, however, the production of sugars is only the first step. Sugar molecules play a clear role in numerous diseases, and for this reason the chemist wants to use his knowledge to develop candidates for vaccines. For example, it is a sugar molecule that plays a vital role in the lethal process of the tropical disease malaria, which claims 5 million victims annually, according to the World Health Organisation. In the year 2002, Seeberger, alongside the Australian researcher Louis Schofield, decoded the toxic substance GPI-Saccharid - a compound sugar which is found on the surface of the malaria pathogen Plasmodium falciparum. At the same time, it came to the attention of the researchers that, most of all, it is children under the age of two which fall victim to malaria. “At this age they can produce an immune response against proteins, but not against sugars”, he explains. Thus, the sugar molecules caught the eye of the researchers as a potential vaccine.

For the moment, Seeberger’s start-up business, Ancora Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, USA, is working on bringing the synthesis machine to the market as well as developing a market-suitable vaccine against malaria. With the help of his automated synthesizer, Seeberger was able to produce the toxic substance GPI-Saccharidartificially and connect it to a protein. “An individual sugar can circulate in the bloodstream for months or years before the body recognises it as foreign and produces the appropriate anti-bodies. If it’s connected to a protein, however, the body produces the anti-bodies within a few days and is ready for the worst-case scenario”. In trials on mice, the vaccine has already proved to be very effective.

Vaccine candidates against HIV and Anthrax in the Pipeline

In 2006, the Chemistry Professor hopes that the sugar-based vaccine will be tested on humans. If the studies are successful, he counts on five to ten years before an introduction to the market. Now the money must be found to complete these expensive developmental stages. “It’s frustrating but understandable. Ultimately, these sorts of substances are considered too high-risk a venture to be lucrative enough for the pharmaceutical industry”, he says. Seeberger is not discouraged, however, and is already researching a whole other set of candidates for sugar-based vaccines, namely for HIV, anthrax and bird flu. With so many projects on the go, there remains little time for private pleasures. And so it is that the skiing-enthusiast is only able to enjoy the Swiss Alps through his office window. For now, the work is more important.

This year, the busy scientist was honoured for his achievements: The Körber Prize, worth 750.000 euros, was awarded to Seeberger on 7 September in Hamburg. The annual honour goes to European researchers, who have developed a trend-setting project. The synthesis machine, with its significance for vaccine development, was judged to be such a forward-looking project by this year’s jury, which was headed by the President of the Max Planck Association, Professor Peter Gruss.