Marcus Conrad

Marcus Conrad is Director of the Institute of Metabolism and Cell Death at Helmholtz Zentrum München. Marcus Conrad studied biology at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and received his doctorate with distinction from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich in 2001. After a short postdoctoral period, he was an independent group leader until 2009 at Helmholtz Zentrum München. From 2009 – 2010 he was employed as Laboratory Head at Bayer-Schering AG, Berlin. After two years at the newly founded German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, he returned to Helmholtz Zentrum München as research group leader in 2012. In 2020, he was appointed Director of the Institute of Metabolism and Cell Death. His laboratory has pioneered the field of ferroptosis and made a number of groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of oxidative cell death both in (neuro)degenerative diseases and cancer. He discovered the first in vivo active ferroptosis inhibitors, the so-called liproxstatins, whose next generation variants have already entered preclinical development to be used for the treatment of (neuro)degenerative disease. Marcus Conrad has published more than 160 articles, holds several patents and is co-founder and shareholder of ROSCUE Therapeutics GmbH. He was recently appointed as a new member of the Hinterzarten Circle of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) on cancer research.