U3: Targets from the black box

Axel Ullrich has been a well-known figure in biotech for some 25 years. His research not only led to the identification of a number of cellular pathways controlling growth, as well as to Herceptin and recombinant insulin, but to a number of companies as well: Sugen Inc., his first enterprise, and VirGene Pharmaceuticals AG, now Axxima AG.

Last year he started his third company, U3 Pharma AG, based on new findings in signal transduction pathways coming out of his lab at the department of molecular biology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry...