Axel Ullrich (born 19 October 1943) is a German cancer researcher and has been the director of the molecular biology department at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany since 1988.
[2] He was one of several scientific leaders of 200+ scientists in developing the anti-cancer drug Trastuzumab (trade name: Herceptin) at Genentech, and has co-founded five biotech companies, Axxima, U3 Pharma, Kinaxo, SUGEN (acquired by Pfizer) and Blackfield.
Ullrich is also Principal Investigator of Singapore Oncogenome Project at the Institute of Medical Biology aimed at identifying all oncogenic alterations in all protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) gene transcripts of a large number of tumor cell lines and primary tumors.
The discovery, medical and pharmaceutical development as well as clinical testing of the drug was carried out by about 100+ scientists and physicians, at SUGEN, a company co-founded in 1991 by Ullrich, and the Max Planck Society, and other investors.
Years later, a small molecule inhibitor of the VEGFR2 kinase function was developed, from which a derivative was approved in 2006 for the treatment of kidney carcinoma and gastro-intestinal stromal tumors.