Shortly before his death, a foundation was set up in his and his wife’s name to support collaboration among young scientists and their studies in the field of metastasis.
Beug followed Thomas Graf to the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ) in Heidelberg in 1978 to continue his postdoc, and to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in 1983.
The same year he was awarded the Josef Steiner Cancer Research Foundation prize, jointly with Mariano Barbacid and Thomas Graf.
He showed how a cooperation of deregulated genes is required for epithelial-mesenchymal transition and metastatic potential of cancer cells.
Through this prize, the foundation aims to offer a financial seed to obtain the first preliminary data that are required to convince funding institutions to further support this project.