Prof. Thomas von Woedtke, member of the Executive Board and Head of Research at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP), was recently awarded this year's Plasma Medicine Award by the International Society for Plasma Medicine (ISPM) at the 8th International Conference on Plasma Medicine (ICPM-8). The award is presented every two years to selected researchers for their scientific achievements in the field of plasma medicine. Following the awarding of the prize in 2013 to Prof. Klaus-Dieter Weltmann, INP Greifswald, and in 2018 to Prof. Dr. Dr. Hans-Robert Metelmann, University Medicine Greifswald, the Plasma Medicine Award goes to Greifswald for the third time, underlining the importance of Greifswald as a centre of science for this field of medical research.
Dr Sander Bekeschus, research group leader for "Plasma Redox Effects" at the INP, was also honoured. He received the "Early Career Award in Plasma Medicine". The scientist impressed the international jury in this category with his innovative plasma medicine research over the last 10 years and his publications in high-profile journals.
The INP is delighted with this double success and congratulates both scientists on the well-deserved awards for their scientific achievements and successes.
The International Conference on Plasma Medicine, which takes place every two years and is organised by Kwangoon University Seoul, South Korea, in 2021, is the most important international platform for the scientific exchange of the latest findings in the various fields of plasma medicine and plasma bioscience ( ).
Prof. Thomas von Woedtke has been Vice-Chairman of the National Centre for Plasma Medicine (NZPM) since 2015. As one of the leading scientists in the field of plasma medicine, he took up the world's first W2 professorship for plasma medicine at the University Medicine Greifswald in 2011. Since 2008, von Woedtke has headed the "Plasma Medicine" research programme and has been a scientific member of the INP's Executive Board since 2020. Prof. von Woedtke's research mainly investigates the in vitro effects of physical plasma on liquids, organisms and cells. The aim of this work is to improve the characterisation and control of the physical properties of cold atmospheric pressure plasmas in interaction with living systems in order to redesign and optimise plasma devices for medical applications and thus open up new areas of application. Under the leadership of Thomas von Woedtke, the INP is a member of the newly funded research network "Leibniz Health Technologies" and is responsible for the competence field "Plasma Medicine".
Dr. Sander Bekeschus is a human biologist and holds a doctorate in immunology. After research stays in New Zealand and the USA, he headed a third-party-funded junior research group at the ZIK plasmatis Centre of Excellence from 2016 to 2021, which was consolidated into a permanently funded research group at the INP in summer 2021. Bekeschus and his team are researching the redox effects of plasmas using cell biology and translational laboratory models in the disciplines of dermatology, oncology and immunology. "Another focus is the application-oriented optimisation of plasmas through interdisciplinary research," says Sander Bekeschus. His working group's latest findings include intrinsic mechanisms of oxidative stress defence in tumour cells and the use of plasma-oxidised proteins for new approaches in vaccine research. Sander Bekeschus heads the "Plasma Cancer Treatment" working group in the EU project "PlasTHER", has been a board member of the National Centre for Plasma Medicine (NZPM) since 2017 and is a young scientist award winner of the International Society for Redox Biology and Medicine. His research is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the German Research Foundation (DFG), European funding and various medical foundations in Germany.
