Austrian medical researcher Josef Penninger has applied his genius to the study of heart, lung and bone diseases, autoimmune diseases and cancers. Since 2002 he has been director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna. He is also Full Professor in Immunology and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto and Professor of Genetics at the University of Vienna. Penninger’s work is published in the prestigious science journals Nature, Cell, and Science.
By engineering genetic mutations in mice, Penninger and his team at the IMBA are able to study the principles of development and the basic mechanisms of disease pathogenesis. His work has led to important findings in areas such as cancer metastases, SARS, tooth loss, and bone loss in such diseases as osteoporosis and childhood leukemia. As a result of his research, drugs for bone loss are currently being developed. He is also responsible for the discovery of a causal link between bacterial infections and heart disease.
