Kurt Ballmer-Hofer investigates the molecular mechanisms that stimulate the formation of new blood vessels. With this knowledge, new agents could be developed that cut tumours off from their blood supply and thus effectively starve them. (Photo: Scanderbeg Sauer Photography)
Forty years of research on cell growth. PSI researcher Kurt Ballmer-Hofer is concerned with the question of how tumours could be starved by preventing the development of blood vessels. After 40 years of research that yielded many fundamental insights about the formation of blood vessels, one of the key molecules has been found; further research is expected to enable clinical applications. Ballmer-Hofer will be following these future advances from the perspective of retirement. For forty years, Kurt Ballmer-Hofer has been delving into the question of how cells grow - an important basis for research on cancer cells because, in such malignant diseases, undesirable cells grow uncontrollably. When I entered into research in the mid-1970s, we were just beginning to understand some of the fundamental mechanisms regulating cell growth. For example, the way a virus makes cells grow and, at the same time, produce new viruses, recalls the chemist and long-time group leader in the Laboratory for Biomolecular Research at the Paul Scherrer Institute.
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