The DZIF mourns the loss of Professor Gerd Sutter
Professor Gerd Sutter has died at the age of 61. His pioneering work on the development of MVA vaccines against measles, MERS-CoV and West Nile virus, among others, had a major impact on modern infection research. At the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), he was particularly committed to establishing the translational MVA vaccine platform. The scientific community and the DZIF will deeply miss his outstanding engagement and positive qualities.
Professor Gerd Sutter was born in 1962 in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and studied veterinary medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich. After graduating in 1988, he began his virological research on the Modified Vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) with his PhD thesis at the Institute of Microbiology of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Munich. From 1990 to 1993, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA.
In 1994, he returned to Germany and continued his work on smallpox viruses and MVA vaccines in his own research group at the Institute of Molecular Virology at Helmholtz Munich. In 1999, he habilitated in virology at the LMU’s Institute of Microbiology. In 2003, he became Director and Professor of the Virology Division at the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut in Langen, Germany, where, in addition to his scientific work, he was also involved in regulatory tasks related to vaccine development and approval.
In 2009, he was appointed Professor and Chair of the Institute of Virology at the LMU’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. As a veterinarian and professor of virology, he has been deeply committed to the One Health concept. Influenza, paramyxoviruses and coronaviruses are just some of the many zoonotic pathogens that Gerd Sutter has worked on.
During his PhD, he became deeply interested in smallpox viruses—in particular MVA and its potential as a viral vector for vaccine development. In this context, he developed the technique of inserting foreign genes into the MVA genome. This paved the way for the production of recombinant MVA vaccines against various infectious agents. Using this approach, Gerd Sutter has worked on recombinant MVA vaccines against HIV, measles, avian influenza, MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus), SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) and West Nile virus.
Professor Gerd Sutter’s commitment to the German Center for Infection Research
At the DZIF, he has been involved since its foundation in 2012 as an expert in the development of new vaccination strategies, particularly in the research area "Emerging Infections", and since 2019 also as Chair of the Internal Advisory Board. He achieved a further breakthrough in the establishment of an MVA vaccine platform when, on the basis of the preclinical protocols he developed and his excellent interdisciplinary networking with colleagues worldwide, he made a decisive contribution to enabling such recombinant vaccines to be tested in clinical human trials. Gerd Sutter thus laid the foundation for the establishment of the translational MVA vaccine platform at the DZIF, which is now used in various areas.
Of particular note is his work on the development of an MVA vaccine against MERS-CoV and the rapid development of an MVA vaccine against COVID-19. Both vaccines were developed to phase Ia/b clinical trials at the DZIF. For this pioneering work in the clinical development of MVA vaccines, Gerd Sutter was awarded the DZIF Prize for Translational Infection Research in 2020.
“Gerd Sutter impressed his colleagues with his positive charisma, enthusiasm, generosity and strategic foresight,” says Professor Asisa Volz, a long-time colleague. "At the same time, he was a very humble person who always had an open ear and supported others whenever he had the opportunity to do so." "With Gerd Sutter, the DZIF loses a dedicated, outstanding researcher and a wonderful colleague. We will miss him very much," emphasises DZIF Chair Professor Dirk Busch.
