Enno Klußmann

Dr. Enno Klußmann is looking for a way to help patients suffering from cardiac insufficiency. “Traditional medications help to improve the patient’s condition,” notes Klußmann, “but they only stop the disease for a short period of time.” Klußmann and his team at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin-Buch are working on a new, more targeted therapeutic approach that is more effective and has potentially fewer side effects than previous methods. His approach seeks to influence the interaction of certain proteins, i.e. the A kinase adaptor proteins 2 (AKAP). Klußmann is especially focusing on the interaction of AKAP with the protein kinase PKA.

Cardiac Muscles and Kidney Cells Influence the Emergence of Cardiac Insufficiency

AKAP-PKA interactions are involved not only in water resorption in kidney cells; they also regulate the contractility of heart muscle cells. Both types of cells are fundamentally involved in the emergence of cardiac insufficiency. Kidney cells are responsible for filtering water from the urine and delivering it to the blood. In patients with cardiac insufficiency, this resorption functions far too well, i.e. too much water gets into the blood. This increases the risk of hypertension and consequently the risk of developing cardiac insufficiency. The contractility of heart cells decreases when a patient suffers from cardiac insufficiency.  

By using certain molecules to block decisive protein-protein interactions in cardiac-muscle and kidney cells, Klußmann supports the pumping function of the heart and prevents excessive water resorption. Klußmann’s therapeutic approach targets only those parts of a cell that are really affected. Other medications still affect body cells and molecular mechanisms that are not participants in the disease, which results in unwanted side effects. 

Winner of the GO Bio Competition

In 2007, Enno Klußmann and his innovative therapeutic approach were prize winners in the second funding round of GO-Bio, a competition set up by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Klußmann used the award funds to expand the opportunities for drug development and, in particular, to set up a chemistry laboratory. All of this took place at the Leibniz Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (FMP), where Klußmann was researching until November 2010, at which point he moved his working group to the MDC. The team’s cooperation with the neighboring institute remains very close, however, and their chemistry lab continues to be housed at the FMP.

With the goal of making market-ready drugs out of the inhibitors developed until now, Klußmann is currently planning to found his own company together with partners Walter Rosenthal and Heiner Renneberg. “As a researcher in the academic sphere, it’s very difficult to develop a drug all the way from the beginning to its first application in human beings,” says Klußmann. In order to do that, scientists need the corresponding financial means, which are often beyond the academic scope. In his new company, Klußmann plans to develop substances all the way to the so-called “proof of concept” stage in human beings. However, the subsequent drug development steps will inevitably be so expensive that they can only be achieved with the help of an established partner in the pharmaceutical industry.
"We’ve got a lot of work to do until then,“ says Enno Klussmann, “but we’re confident that our innovative approach of modulating protein-protein interactions according to defined structures in target cells is the right way to develop specific new drugs.”