Axel Ullrich (born October 19, 1943, Lauban, Silesia, Germany) in is a German cancer researcher and has been the Director of Molecular biology at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany since 1988. His research has primarily focused on signal transduction. Ullrich received the Wolf Prize in 2010.

Life and work
After taking a degree in biochemistry at the University of Tübingen, Germany, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in Molecular Genetics in 1975. He then did his postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco from 1975 to 1977 and then worked as a senior scientist at Genentech in San Francisco, California from 1978 to 1988. From 1988, he has been at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry.

He was one of the developers of the anti-cancer drug Trastuzumab (trade name: Herceptin) and has founded at least three biotech companies one of which is SUGEN which is owned by Pfizer.

He is listed by the Institute for Scientific Information) (ISI) as a highly cited biologist and he is also in the top ten of H-index of living biologists.

Ullrich is also Principal Investigator of [Singapore Oncogenome Project] at the Institute of Medical Biology aimed at identifying all oncogenic alterations in all protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) gene transcripts of a large number of tumor cell lines and primary tumors. The laboratory also focuses on functional characterization and, in cooperation with clinical oncologists, investigation of the clinical relevance of the newly discovered PTK oncogenes which serves as basis for the development of novel multi-targeted “smart drugs”.

The discovery of the drug Sunitinib and clarification of the multi-specific mechanism of action is based on discoveries of Axel Ullrich and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in the 1980s in Munich. Medical and pharmaceutical development as well as clinical testing of the drug was carried out by Sugen, a company founded in 1991 by Ullrich and the Max Planck Society. The concept was of an ATP analogue that would compete with ATP for binding to the catalytic site of receptor tyrosine kinases. This concept led to the invention of an important small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor called Sunitinib. Sunitinib inhibits cellular signaling by targeting multiple receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs). These include all receptors for platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF-Rs) and vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFRs), which play a role in both tumor angiogenesis and tumor cell proliferation. The simultaneous inhibition of these targets therefore leads to both reduced tumor vascularization and cancer cell death, and ultimately tumor shrinkage.

Johnson & Johnson announced Ullrich, whose discoveries have led to novel cancer therapies including Herceptin (trastuzumab)*, as the winner of the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research 2009. He was chosen for his pioneering work in applying molecular biology and molecular cloning to the discovery of protein therapeutics for the treatment of a wide range of diseases, including diabetes and cancer. Ullrich is one of few basic scientists whose work not only has influenced academic research, but also has helped millions of patients suffering from major chronic diseases. His work has had a remarkable impact on human health. Ullrich has pioneered the translation of genomics-based discoveries into novel approaches for the treatment of major diseases. Working at Genentech, Inc. in the early 1980s, he developed genetically engineered human insulin, the first therapeutic derived from gene cloning. In 1987, Ullrich and collaborators discovered that the neu/HER2 gene is amplified and overexpressed in more than 30 percent of invasive breast cancers. HER2 was chosen for the development of an entirely novel cancer therapy, culminating in the production of an anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody that since 1998 has been used successfully to treat patients with metastatic breast cancer. This was the first targeted therapeutic agent developed based on a newly discovered gene with an oncogenic function in human cancer.

In the early 1990s, Ullrich identified the signaling system involved in regulating tumor angiogenesis, the growth of blood vessels in tumors. He discovered that inhibiting a key player in the signaling system (called vascular endothelial growth factor receptor or VEGFR) suppresses the generation of blood vessels in tumors and slows down cancer cell growth. Years later, a small molecule inhibitor of the VEGFR2 kinase function was developed, from which a derivative was approved in 2006 for the treatment of kidney carcinoma and gastro-intestinal stromal tumors.

Ullrich received the Wolf Prize in 2010 for his research on human proto-onco-genes.