Update on the Sleeping Beauty transposon system: current state-of-the-art & remaining challenges

Zoltán Ivics received his PhD in molecular biology in 1994. After postoctoral studies at the University of Minnesota in the USA and the Netherlands Cancer Institute, he was appointed as a research group leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany. He was appointed as Head of Division at the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Langen, Germany, in 2011. Prof. Ivics’ major scientific achievement is the molecular reconstruction of the Sleeping Beauty transposon and development of technologies based on Sleeping Beauty gene transfer for a wide array of applications involving genetic engineering of cells. Prof. Ivics has published >130 papers in peer reviewed journals, with a total Impact Factor of >800 and >7000 citations (h-index: 44), and is co-inventor on 12 patents. Since 2000 his research efforts were supported by >20 research grants from the German Research Foundation, the German Ministry of Education and Research, the European Commission, and the Volkswagen Foundation. He received recognition of the ‘Molecule of the Year’ in 2009 for developing a hyperactive Sleeping Beauty transposase that opened the door for clinical applications. He is a current member of the Board of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ESGCT), member of the Board of the German Society of Gene Therapy and member of the committee for ‘Clinical trials and regulatory affairs’ of the German Stem Cell Network. Prof. Ivics organized several international conferences, including the Annual Congress of the ESGCT in Berlin in 2017. He is an Elected Member of the Academia Europaea since 2018.

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