Dr. Michael Przybylski - Adjunct Professor

Michael Przybylski studied chemistry and completed his PhD dissertation at the University of Mainz. After being research associate in Bioorganic Chemistry at Mainz, he spent two years as a Visiting Scientist at the National Cancer Institute, NIH/USA. He was Associate Professor in Organic and Biopolymer Chemistry at the University of Mainz, and was appointed in 1989 to the Professorship and Head of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Konstanz, where he is the Director of the Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry and Biopolymer Structure Analysis. Since then his laboratory has made numerous developments and applications of biopolymer mass spectrometry methods, combined with protein- and peptide-chemical methods, tertiary structure analysis by protein-chemical modification and mass spectrometry, and mass spectrometric determination of biopolymer recognition structures. His laboratory has invented proteolytic-excision mass spectrometry for the elucidation of protein-ligand interaction structures, and peptide/protein epitopes, and has elucidated the structure of several membrane proteins, such as Lung Surfactant protein-C.

The laboratory’s current research is focused on applications of mass spectrometry and peptide biochemistry to structure and mechanism of neurodegenerative proteins; pathophysiological protein modification; vaccine chemistry; structure and epitope analysis of therapeutic antibodies; affinity-mass spectrometry of biopolymer interaction epitopes; mass spectrometric elucidation of oligomerisation/truncation pathways and structures of “misfolding”/aggregating proteins in neurodegenerative diseases.

Michael Przybylski has been awarded the St Denis Prize in Cancer Research; several international Guest Professorships; the Life Science Prize of the German Society for Mass Spectrometry; an honorary doctoral degree of the University of Iasi, RO; He is currently Guest Professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, and of Jilin University, China. He has been member of Scientific Committees of several International Conferences, has been Editor and is Editorial Board member of several International Journals in the field of biopolymer chemistry and mass spectrometry, and has been Chairman of the German Society for Mass Spectrometry. He has been coordinator of two previous FP5 and FP6 EU projects. He has served as scientific advisor, and board member of several international Research Institutions in mass spectrometry and proteomics, and is member of the Graduate School “Chemical Biology”, and board member of the “Zukunftskolleg”, two recently appointed Excellence Centers of the University of Konstanz. He has ca. 300 publications in International Journals; 6 monographs/reviews; ca. 25 patents; ca. 100 invited lectures.