Torsten Tonn

Torsten Tonn is Professor for Transfusion Medicine at “Carl Gustav Carus” Faculty of Medicine, Dresden University of Technology and medical director of the German Red Cross Blood Donation Service North-East. He served as member in the Cell-based Products Working Party of the Committee for Advanced Therapies within the European Medicine Agency. He has been awarded several prestigious awards, including Science4life German wide Biotech Award and Fritz v. Acker Cancer Research Award, Medical Faculty, University Frankfurt/Main. Prof. Tonn published over 300 highly cited papers. His research interests include the study of molecular and cell biological aspects of hematopoietic stem and mesenchymal stromal cells, as well as of T lymphocytes, with a strong focus on translational aspects. In addition, a strong focus lies on the development and optimization of GMP-compliant procedures to generate “advanced therapeutic medicinal products” for their clinical application as cell-based therapies: the development of a Natural Killer cell line (NK-92) for cancer immunotherapy, and the generation of immortalized nucleated red blood cells for the in vitro generation of erythrocyte concentrates for transfusion.

As Doctor Honoris Causa of the “Victor Babes” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara, he contributed decisively in the establishment of OncoGen centre as the state-of-the-art research facility in the field.