Professor Dr Erich Gulbins

Erich Gulbins has made several very important basic science discoveries related to the physiology, biochemistry and pathophysiology of sphingolipids. His findings have broad biomedical implications and have opened the doors to new treatment options for serious human disorders. Specifically, Erich Gulbins demonstrated that ceramide molecules form distinct domains in cellular membranes and that these domains are crucial to the regulation of many signal transduction pathways.
Erich Gulbins applied this novel basic principle of signal transduction to studies on several important biomedical problems. He was first to demonstrate that ceramide plays a crucial role in many bacterial infections and that ceramide regulates basic mechanisms of the host-pathogen interaction. The results of these studies were applied to investigations of the role of ceramide in cystic fibrosis; the findings demonstrated an accumulation of ceramide in cystic fibrosis lungs, which determines important symptoms of the disease. In additional studies he identified the role of ceramide in major depression and the treatment of this disease.