Dr. Christopher M. Overall, Professor Oral Biological and Medical Sciences, was awarded the 2022 Helmut Holzer Award, an honour recognizing outstanding contributions to the advancement of the field of proteolysis.

The award, sponsored by the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was presented on September 18 at the opening plenary lecture of the September 19-22, 2022 Federation of European Biochemical Societies conference “Proteolysis at the Interface between Health and Disease,” in Bled, Slovenia. Dr. Overall’s lecture was entitled “Pathobiology of COVID-19 Deciphered by TAILS Analysis of SARS CoV-2 3CLpro Substrates.”

Dr. Helmut Holzer (1921-1997) served as chairman of the Scientific Society of Freiburg for 25 years. The award in his honour was established after his death in 1997.

Dr. Overall reports that in a happy coincidence, he was an external senior fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS), School of Life Sciences – LifeNet, Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, where he is now an honorary professor.