This year, the award of the Klüh Foundation for the Promotion of Innovation in Science and Research, which is endowed with 25,000 Euros, goes to the scientist Prof. Dr. Jutta Gärtner. The director of the Clinic for Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine at Göttingen University Medical Centre is being honoured for her pioneering research into neurometabolic and neurodegenerative diseases in children and adolescents. Her research focuses on rare diseases such as childhood dementia and paediatric multiple sclerosis. The aim of her work is to decipher the genetic and molecular causes of these diseases and thus lay the foundation for new therapeutic approaches.
The prize, which has been awarded since 1987, was presented in Düsseldorf’s historic town hall in the presence of the Lord Mayor Dr. Stephan Keller. The laudatory speech was given by Prof. Dr. Bettina Rockenbach, President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Prof. Dr. Jutta Gärtner is regarded as one of the leading scientists in the field of neuropaediatrics. She studied and obtained her doctorate in medicine at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and at the University of Hamburg. She then spent several years researching and working at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA, before moving to the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in 1993. There she earned her postdoctoral qualification to teach as a professor in 1995 and obtained her specialist certification in paediatrics and adolescent medicine. Since 2002, she has been head of the Department of Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine at Göttingen University Medical Centre.
One focus of her scientific work is research into rare neurometabolic and neurodegenerative diseases in children and adolescents. Together with her team, she has been able to identify numerous genetic causes of these diseases and develop the first successful therapies. In addition, she founded the German Centre for Multiple Sclerosis in Childhood and Adolescence together with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Brück in 2008 and has been head of the Centre for Rare Diseases Göttingen (ZSEG) since 2017. As a spokesperson for the German Centre for Child and Adolescent Health (DZKJ) and member of the Presidium of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, she is closely involved in scientific networks at a national and international level. She is also active in numerous expert committees, including the Commission on Medicines for Children and Adolescents of the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM), the Scientific Advisory Board of the Von Behring Röntgen Foundation and the Medical Advisory Board of the German Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Laudator Prof. Dr. Bettina Rockenbach: “With Prof. Dr. Jutta Gärtner, we are honouring an outstanding researcher who, with great scientific clarity and perseverance, has made a decisive contribution to the understanding and treatment of rare neurodegenerative diseases in children. Her work opens up perspectives that give affected children and their families new hope.”
Her outstanding research achievements have already received numerous awards, including the Hamburg Science Prize from the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg, the Gerhard Hess Prize from the German Research Foundation, and the Adalbert Czerny Prize from the German Society for Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
