Jürgen Seibel: The sugar exposes the tumour

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The Würzburg sugar researcher Jürgen Seibel. Source: privat

17.10.2012  - 

Even Jürgen Seibel is not sure how he came to win the award. “You can’t nominate yourself,” he says. “What happens is that you get a sudden and unexpected phone call to ask whether you will accept the prize.” The award is the Young Professor Award from the chemical company DuPont, which is endowed with €75 000 of funding over three years. The money is used to fund the winners’ own research. There were nine winners this year, of which Seibel is the only European. His prize money will be heading to the Sugar Research at the University of Würzburg.

Sugar compounds play a role in a great many diseases. “They are like the keys to a cell,” explains Seibel. A variety of sugars structures can also be found on the surface of tumour cells. Seibel's working group is trying to synthesise these sugars, with the ultimate aim of developing a vaccine. A vaccine against cancer: surely too good to be true? But sugar is a strong point of attack.

Via Watson and Crick to chemistry

Seibel is far from the only scientist in his extended family: Seibel's wife and father-in-law are both chemists. What may have pushed him on the path to science, however, was a riveting childhood viewing of the film about the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick. The natural sciences were his specialty at school; maths and physics were other favourite subjects. When he began chemistry in seventh grade, Seibel found his ultimate favourite. “I enjoyed the challenge of understanding complex relationships,” he says. “Theoretically you can do this with computer models, but it was all so beautifully precise in the chemistry.” And so the young scientist from Eschwege headed off to Göttingen to study chemistry. After his dissertation – completed in 2000 with summa cum laude – he travelled to the University of Oxford for a two-year research fellowship.

“This was an amazingly fun time,” he recalls. “The university really pushed me. Everything was watched very closely, but this gives you a spur. Science is a way of life there every day – and the fun and fascination only makes it more successful.” This is a principle that he has tried to bring home with him on his return to Germany. Intensive interexchange and a good team spirit are very important. Outside of work, for example, there is an annual football match in the department. As department head he is fouled more than everyone else, he laughs.

Seibel’s work with sugar molecules took a decisive turn in 2007 when he began work at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig. One year later, he was awarded with the Jochen-Block Award from Dechema. Since 2009, he is researching and teaching as a professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Julius Maximilians University in Würzburg.

A difficult synthesis

The Würzburg University Medical Center specialises in infectious diseases caused by viruses and bacteria. Seibel’s team identifies important sugar compounds that can play a role in these diseases, for example as docking points for host cells. These are synthesised as interesting sugar molecules, and subject to testing. This is a difficult task, says the professor: Sugar consists of long chains of sugar molecules, and each molecule has numerous contact points that are mostly extremely similar in their reaction behaviour. As a rule, five other contacts must be blocked in order to establish a specific connection with two specific contacts. “We’re occupied more with protecting the other locations than with connecting to the right sugar molecule,” explains Seibel. In order to produce the sugars economically, the researchers use genetically engineered enzymes – a ‘tool box’ for manufacturing sugars, says the scientist.

A system with handicap

The next step – studies into synthesised sugar – will be financed by the out-of-the-blue prize money. “We want to know which biological process lead to a sugar being presented to a cell,” says Seibel. Cooperation partners from the fields of biophysics and computer science will provide assistance in the visualisation and analysis of structures. Using a specially developed reading device, Seibel hopes for early successes, particularly in the study of sugar structures on cancer cells. “We have developed a good system,” he says. “I hope for quick success.”

Unlike his hobbies, the system stands a chance of being made fit for purpose sooner rather than later: Seibel recently tore his Achilles tendon, and is on leave until further notice from his role in the university football team. His other two passions – triathlon and sailing – are also on the back burner. The sugar researcher still has his home in Eschwege, and as soon as his foot is healed he hopes to once again sail across the nearby Werratalsee lake.

Author: Cornelia Kästner