MDC Researcher Prof. Willnow Receives Franz Volhard Award:

In the context of the opening event for the annual conference of the German Society of Nephrology in Berlin, Prof. Dr Thomas Willnow from the Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch was presented with the Franz Volhard Award 2011. In his research, Willnow had discovered that the vitamins D, A and B12, which are linked to transport proteins, avoid expulsion due to a specific process in the renal tubules. If this process is defective, vitamin deficiencies are the result. He furthermore discovered that the same mechanism is also responsible for the effect that antibiotics, which are harmful to the kidneys, are not expelled but rather accumulate in the kidneys. The MDC researcher shares the award endowed with a total of 10,000 Euro with Dr Marcus J. Möller from the RWTH Aachen University for his research on (patho-)physiologic mechanisms in renal corpuscles.

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