Six PMI cluster members are "Highly Cited Researchers" 2022

Once a year, the "Web of Science Group" of the US company Clarivate Analytics analyzes the importance of scientists based on their citation rates. Researchers whose work is cited particularly frequently by their peers are considered to be especially important and influential in their field. The Highly Cited Researchers ranking lists scientists who have contributed to several of the top one-percent most cited publications in their field over the past decade.

In 2022, 6,938 of the world's researchers from 21 research fields were on the list. Among them were six members of the Cluster of Excellence "Precision Medicine in Chronic Inflammation" (PMI) from Kiel and Lübeck: Axel Hauschild, Rolf Hilgenfeld, Christine Klein, Frank Leypoldt, Stefan Rose-John and Stefan Schreiber.

The evaluation is based on the "Web of Science Core Collection" database. This lists scientific articles from around 21,000 journals. For this year's list of "Highly Cited Researchers" the period 2011 to 2021 was analyzed. The ranking is an important indicator of the influence of scientific publications that belong to the most cited one percent of their field. In 2022, 6938 of the world's researchers from 69 countries were on the list.

The Clarivate Analytics ranking

Since his time as a resident physician in the Clinic for Dermatology, Venereology and Allergology of the UKSH, Campus Kiel, more than 30 years ago, Professor Axel Hauschild has been interested in skin cancer, especially malignant melanoma, black skin cancer, a highly malignant tumor. The introduction of new drugs has significantly improved treatment for advanced disease in recent years. "The 5-year survival, which is used as a measure of cure, was 5% for advanced melanoma in 2010 and is now 52%. But there are now effective therapies for light skin cancer as well - even for non-operable patients with very large and metastatic tumors," emphasizes Hauschild, who has played a major role in this success.

Hauschild has been principal investigator of more than 120 clinical trials on various skin cancers, has been invited to more than 700 conferences around the world, and has published 440 articles in high-impact scientific journals. As of 2019, he is on the Highly Cited Researchers list for the fourth consecutive year. In recognition of his clinical and scientific contributions to skin cancer therapy, Hauschild received the German Skin Cancer Award in 2003 and the German Cancer Society's German Cancer Award in 2011. He is a long-standing board member of the European Association of Dermato-Oncology (EADO), served as president of the German Skin Cancer Society (ADO) for 8 years, and twice each as president of the German Skin Cancer Congress and the Melanoma World Congress, where he was elected president of the Melanoma World Society (MWS) in 2021.

Professor Christine Klein's central research interest is the hereditary causes of movement disorders, such as familial Parkinson's syndromes or dystonia, a group of movement disorders that have their neurological origin in the motor centers in the brain. Prof. Klein's focus is particularly on the question of why many people who are carriers of a disease-causing genetic mutation do not become ill but remain healthy, and how the genetic makeup of those with the disease can affect the success of therapy.

Professor Christine Klein is Director of the Institute of Neurogenetics and Head of the Neurogenetics Section at the Department of Neurology, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Lübeck Campus, and a board member of the Cluster of Excellence "Precision Medicine in Chronic Inflammation" (PMI). She is acting Past-President of the German Society of Neurology (more than 11,000 members), "Chair-Elect of the European Section of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society", spokesperson of the DFG Research Group FOR 2488 on reduced penetrance of movement disorders and leader of the "Monogenic Network of the Global Parkinson's Genetics Program".

Professor Stefan Rose-John is an internationally sought-after expert on the cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6). He was Professor of Biochemistry at the Medical Faculty of CKiel University and Director of the Biochemical Institute for more than 22 years. He retired in October 2022. The biochemist recognized the central importance of the messenger substance IL-6 in the inflammatory process more than 25 years ago and systematically researched its structure and mode of action. In 2001, he published in the renowned scientific journal Science the spatial structure with which IL-6 binds to one of its receptors, thus laying a foundation for further research. He was also the first to describe the proteolytic formation of a soluble IL-6 receptor and the resulting IL-6 trans-signaling pathway. He demonstrated that this pathway is critical for triggering chronic inflammation, whereas processes of cell renewal and normal protective immune responses are regulated via the classical signaling pathway. This discovery makes it possible to specifically inhibit only the pro-inflammatory signals of interleukin-6. Rose-John developed the designer protein sgp130Fc, which specifically blocks interleukin-6 trans signaling and thereby inhibits inflammation. Under the name olamkicept, a further development of the protein has already been tested in clinical trials in people with inflammatory bowel disease with extremely positive results.

Rose-John has been a member of the DFG Cluster of Excellence on Inflammation Research since its inception and founded Collaborative Research Center 877 "Proteolysis as a Regulatory Element of Pathophysiology" at CAU in 2010, which he has headed ever since. He is an elected member of the Hamburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and was awarded the Science Prize of the City of Kiel in 2005 and the Jacob Henle Medal of Göttingen University in 2019.