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Bucher Porträts
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Prof. Peter M. Schlag
Medical Director of the Robert Rössle Clinic
An exemplary concept
Thirteen years ago Professor Peter M. Schlag moved from the Surgical University Clinic of Heidelberg to Berlin-Buch. He was called to the C4 professorship of Surgery and Surgical Oncology at the Free University of Berlin. The chair also involved being head of the Department of Surgery at the Robert Rössle Clinic and a position as a research group leader at the Max Delbrück Center. He has also been medical director of the Robert Rössle Clinic since 1999.
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“Before the wall came down I had absolutely no personal or family ties with the former GDR” he recalls. However, he knew about the Robert Rössle Clinic as an institution that offered outstanding opportunities to combine research and clinical work. Even as a young medical student it was Peter Schlag’s ideal career to be able to help patients as a clinical physician while at the same time being able to carry out research.
He came from a medical family in Bad Tölz and early on he was interested in biological inter-relationships. However, he also marveled how his mother could work tirelessly and empathetically for her patients as a practicing physician. With this as his background, he began to study medicine in Düsseldorf and later went on to work in Ulm and Heidelberg. His talent for surgery and the great opportunity to be able to help people very effectively in the operating theater led him to decide to become a surgeon. He soon specialized in surgical oncology and, at the same time, began to investigate fundamental questions about the origins of cancer. He carried out work on multimodal surgical interventions and discovered a mechanism which showed how tumor formation can occur more frequently following stomach surgery.
In 1982 Professor Schlag became C3 professor and head of a new surgical-oncology section that was being created in the surgical university clinic in Heidelberg. Here he began a close collaboration between the clinic and the German Cancer Research Center and became increasingly involved with the molecular biological mechanisms of tumor development and metastasis. Then, in 1992, he was called to Berlin.
 The work as a clinic physician in the Robert Rössle Clinic and as a research group leader in the Max Delbrück Center is very close to his image of a unification of clinical medicine and research. In his autobiography in the book “Scientists in the Biomedical Research Center” he says : “In my opinion until now there has been no institution in Germany that has developed and put into practice such a concept in oncology in so exemplary a fashion as is the case in the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine with the associated Robert Rössle Clinic....”
Prof. Schlag and his colleagues are currently working on the question why certain tumors metastasize, i.e. form daughter tumors, while others do not. This is a particularly good area for collaboration with basic researchers. In this context he has developed a particularly good relationship with Prof. Walter Birchmeier of the MDC. The basic researchers are investigating tumor tissue, that can be removed during surgery, to identify certain genetic changes. Based on such information, they hope to be able to develop treatments to combat metastasis formation. His team is also working on a local gene therapy. This is aimed at modifying tumor cells in such a way that, under certain conditions, they will produce a material that will destroy them. In more mundane areas, Prof. Schlag has established a variety of treatments which can be of direct benefit to patients, like isolated organ-perfusion therapy in which a tumor-bearing limb or other tissue can be uncoupled from the rest of the circulation and flushed with high doses of biological cell toxins like, for example, tumor necrosis factor.
After thirteen years, Prof. Schlag still enjoys living in Berlin with his family, he has two adult children. In his limited free time he is particularly fond of the rich variety of art and culture offered by the city. However, he is concerned about the Buch district. “Something needs to be done here to give the place a positive image” he believes. A Life Science Center, that attracts lots of visitors and where people can have fun learning about the topics life, health and future medical developments, he can imagine that as being good for Buch.
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At this site you will find portraits of Buch's citizens and institutions that we think you will be interested in. New ones will be dispalyed each month.
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