Detlev Ganten

Medicine is making great progress. Many illnesses can be effectively treated today. But one of the most important questions often remains unanswered: Why do we become sick in the first place? In order to answer this question, it can help to look far into the past, to the beginnings of life, 3.5 billion years ago. “By examining the evolution of life in general and of humans, we can learn why we become sick,” said Professor Detlev Ganten, Chairman of the Board of the Charité Foundation and President of the World Health Summit.

He is a specialist for Pharmacology and Molecular Medicine and has focused for many years on the causes of cardiovascular illnesses, in particular hypertension and possibilities for treatment and prevention. For this, Ganten regularly looks back to the development of the human body and to the history of our genetics, the genome. A new, promising type of science has emerged in the last ten years: evolutionary medicine. It stems from our molecular and genomic understanding of evolution via new methods of sequencing.

One of the Causes for Hypertension Lies in the Stone Age

An example for this is the so-called Renin-Angiotensin System, which regulates blood pressure and is one of the areas of Professor Ganten’s research. “The Renin-Angiotensin System is an ancient system, which originated more than 500 million years ago in fish and became particularly important when amphibians (salamanders, frogs) and reptiles (snakes, crocodiles) left water for land,” Ganten said. It retains water and salt in the blood and protects the body from dehydration. This function of the Renin-Angiotensin System continued to develop during the evolution of Homo sapiens and in the Stone Age. Back then, the first humans lived in the African Savanna, where water and salt were often rare. Today we consume far too much salt through food, but at the same time, we rarely perspire. Yet the Renin-Angiotensin System continues to work as though it needs to balance out a deficit of water and salt. This makes us sick, and we have high blood pressure.

We can thank genome research for having so much - and such precise - information today about the development of the human body. This mental-framework was built in Berlin-Buch, among other places, initiated in 1935 by Nobel Prize winner Max Delbrück and the Russian genetic scientist Nikolai Timofeev-Ressovsky. When Ganten came to Buch in 1991 to be a founding director of the new institute, which came about from the former GDR’s central institutes for cancer research, cardiovascular research and molecular biology, he built upon the location’s great scientific tradition: The Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) was established and continued genome research – successfully.

Professor Ganten became the Chairman of the Board for the Charité

“In Berlin, I have learned to understand and appreciate the value of an ongoing tradition,” said Professor Ganten. The name Max Delbrück points to the high aspirations on one’s own research, to the expectations of the research institution itself, and simultaneously improves the chances for a better start through worldwide name recognition. The tradition was what led Ganten to say yes in 2004 when he was offered the position as Chairman of the Board for the Charité, which is now 300 years old. “A call to the Charité, with its longstanding tradition, is not something a person can reject,” said Professor Ganten. Once again, he was a founding director – this time for the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He led the fusion of the university medical departments at the Humboldt-Universität and the Freien Universität to one of the largest university hospitals. In this turbulent and difficult time, the distinguished name of the “Charité” helped convince employees from both East and West Berlin of the significance of the fusion. “The tradition does not cancel out reality, but it helps create a motivating feeling of belonging and meaningful corporate identity.”

For Professor Ganten, one of his greatest accomplishments was that he was not forced to close any of the Charité’s locations and that the clinic was able to retain its size, quality and its viability for the future. Also, the Max Delbrück Center is today one of the world’s leading research institutions, which also houses the Biotechnology Park Berlin Buch.

Now he has his hopes set on the cooperation between MDC and the Charité, which both institutions wish to expand in the future. If this expansion of the cooperation comes to pass, Berlin could retake the place it had in the world 150 years ago in scientific medicine. In those days, in the economically important “Gründerzeit” of industrial expansion, countless scientists and industrialists like Virchow, Koch, v. Behring, Ehrlich, Helmholtz and Siemens lived and worked in Berlin, which founded new, innovative economic branches.

“Berlin’s Economic Power Comes from Science”

For a long time before reunification, Berlin was not an attractive city for science. But since 1992 Berlin has “developed more dynamic energy than practically any other city in the world,” said Professor Ganten. “Today Berlin is the leading science-city in Germany.” Even though, according to Professor Ganten, many people still underestimate the importance of science for Berlin and especially for Berlin’s economy. Precisely because Berlin has no heavy industry it is important to promote young, creative types of business and to continue to expand the transfer of knowledge and technology. “Berlin’s economic strength comes from the creative minds in science, joined with entrepreneurial spirit. Money becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes money,” explained Ganten his brief definition of a scientific society.

In 2008 the scientist passed on the position as the Charité’s Chairman of the Board to Professor Karl Max Einhäupl. Since 2009, Ganten has been the President of the World Health Summit. Here the central topic is the accessibility to medical care for people around the world. “In part, today, we practice a type of medicine that was conceptualized 150 years ago,” said Ganten. “This type of medicine is successful, but it is becoming constantly more expensive and is only in part suitable for caring for the 7 billion people on this planet. We therefore need a new type of medicine that will help us understand why we get sick and which is accessible for everyone – a type of medicine that prevents and is not first utilized when we are already sick.”
Already today, health economics is one of the world’s largest and most important branches of economics. This will only increase in the future. “Berlin, the health-city, can and must play a leading role.”