Congratulations to Dr. Manfred Schartl
News shared by Dr. Lluis Montoliu, IFPCS President
On behalf of the ESPCR Awards Committee and of the entire ESPCR Board it is my pleasure to announce the next Fritz Anders Medalist.
The Fritz Anders Lecture was established by the ESPCR in remembrance of the prestigious German scientist, Fritz Anders (Berlin, 1919-Giessen, 1999), Professor of Genetics at the University of Giessen, who pioneered studies of genetics of melanoma using fish animal models. The Fritz Anders medal is awarded at the annual ESPCR meetings (every second meeting after the corresponding IPCC conference) and it is associated with a Keynote Lecture of the awarded researcher. The list of previous Fritz Anders Lecture awardees at ESPCR meetings is listed in this web page: https://www.espcr.org/index37.php
Prof. Manfred Schartl (University of Würzburg, Germany) will be awarded the next Fritz Anders Medal and Lecture at the forthcoming 2025 ESPCR meeting in Erlangen (Germany).
Prof. Manfred Schartl is Senior Professor at the Department of Developmental Biochemistry at the Biocenter of the University of Wuerzburg and Scholar in Residence at the Xiphophorus Genetic Stock Center at Texas State University, San Marcos.
Manfred Schartl studied Chemistry and Biology in Giessen, Germany. For a doctoral degree in Genetics he joined the research team of his mentor, Prof. Dr. Fritz Anders, who introduced him to the Xiphophorus melanoma model. As a postdoc he continued to work with Prof. Anders and his wife, Dr. Annerose Anders with intermittent postdoc research in the laboratory of Dr. Bob Gallo at the NIH Institute in Bethesda, Maryland U.S.A. From 1985 to 1991 he was team leader of a research group at the Gene Center of Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried and got his habilitation from the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. From 1991 until 2019 he held the Chair of Physiological Chemistry at the Biocenter of the University of Wuerzburg and Assistant Head and Head of the Biocenter from 1996 to 2007. He was vice-chairman of the DFG research center for experimental medicine (Rudolf-Virchow-Zentrum). He was vice-president and president of the German Genetics Society between 2005 and 2011. In 2015 he was Visiting Professor at the Department of Biology at the National University of Singapore and from 2016 to 2019 Visiting Professor of the Texas Institute of Advanced Studies at the Department of Biology, Texas A&M University in College Station. Since 2020 he is Senior Professor at the Chair of Developmental Biochemistry at the Biocenter of the University of Wuerzburg and Scholar in Residence at the Xiphophorus Genetic Stock Center at Texas State University, San Marcos. From 2001 until 2020 he was also Adjunct Professor for Experimental Cancer Research at the Institute for Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Bergen/Norway. From this University he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree in 2004. He received the Prince Hitachi Prize for Comparative Oncology in Japan. Since 2011 he is member of the Leopoldina, the National Academy of Sciences of Germany and was appointed member of the European Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Letters (Academia Europaea) in 2021.
The main research interests of Manfred Schartl are the molecular processes in organismic development and their malfunction in cancer formation. The major topic is understanding signal transduction and gene regulation in melanoma, using Xiphophorus and Medaka fish as model systems. Further research topics are sex determination and reproductive development in fish and evolutionary genomics and genetics in fish.
You can find additional information about Manfred Schartl’s scientific contributions in the following web sites:
- https://www.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/ebch/forschung/research-schartl-group/
- https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Schartl_Manfred
Congratulations to Prof. Manfred Schartl for this well deserved Fritz Anders Medal that carries the name of his PhD mentor and collaborator for many years.
His associated Fritz Anders Lecture will be delivered on the first day of the 2025 ESPCR meeting organized by Anja Bosserhoff in Erlangen (Germany) on 25-27 September 2025.