[5] Matthias Hentze studied medicine in the UK at the medical schools at the universities of Southampton, Oxford, Glasgow and Cambridge, and in Germany at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster from which he qualified in 1984.

[3][6] After a short phase of clinical work Hentze became a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland, USA) in 1985, having been awarded a fellowship by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

[3] Together with Andreas Kulozik of the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University, Hentze co-founded the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit (MMPU) in 2002[7][8] and serves as its co-director.

[9] Hentze's research group has paved the way for understanding translational control (RNA-binding proteins, microRNAs) whose significance for developmental biology, brain function, carcinogenesis and other diseases has in the meantime become widely recognized.

[11] In 2010, Hentze proposed the concept of REM Networks, a new interconnection between metabolism and gene expression on the basis of RNA-binding proteins.

[13] Work following this hypothesis led to the development of the "RNA Interactome Capture" technique and to the discovery of hundreds of formerly unknown RNA-binding proteins in the cells of living organisms from human to yeast, including more than 50 metabolic enzymes.