The symposium was convened by the Heracles-Hebe Foundation of the DPU, under the leadership of Prof. h. c. Marga B. Wagner-Pischel, President and CEO of DPU and founder and chair of the Heracles-Hebe Foundation. The publication opens with an introduction by Prof. Dr. Otmar D. Wiestler, Director of Champalimaud Science at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (Lisbon, Portugal), who framed the event as part of a necessary and overdue transition toward preventive medicine — one in which molecular biology, clinical innovation and education must urgently converge.
Seven internationally recognised researchers contributed perspectives spanning metabolic medicine, regenerative biology, nutritional epigenetics, cancer research and food systems science.
Prof. Dr. Matthias Tschöp, President of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and former CEO of Helmholtz Munich, traced the scientific journey from the discovery of the hunger hormone ghrelin to the development of polyagonist drugs that simultaneously activate multiple hormone receptors — reframing obesity as a disorder of biological regulatory circuits rather than a failure of individual discipline.
Prof. Dr. Antje Körner, Head of the Childhood Obesity and Metabolic Research group at the Helmholtz Institute for Metabolism, Obesity and Vascular Research Leipzig (HI-MAG), presented evidence from a landmark cohort of over 50,000 children showing that the biological trajectory toward sustained obesity is set in motion between ages 2 and 6 — and that adipose tissue functions as an active endocrine organ from the earliest years of life.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Josef Penninger, Professor of Personalized Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna, Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), mapped the extraordinary reach of the RANK/RANKL signalling pathway — from bone biology and mammary gland development to immune defence, reproduction and cancer prevention — and its translation into therapies now used by millions of patients worldwide.
Prof. Dr. Elly Tanaka, Scientific Director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and 2025 Wittgenstein Award Winner, offered insights from regeneration biology — and in particular the unexpected role of energy-providing molecules such as glucose in directing stem cell fate during tissue repair and regeneration.
Dr. habil. Maria Keller, researcher in nutritional epigenomics and metabolic medicine at HI-MAG Leipzig, presented findings from the DIRECT PLUS randomised controlled trial demonstrating that a polyphenol-rich green Mediterranean diet induces measurable, lasting changes in the human methylome — a molecular record of what we eat, sustained long after the meal itself.
Prof. Dr. Mathias Heikenwälder, Head of the Division of Chronic Inflammation and Cancer at the German Cancer Research Center (GCRC) in Heidelberg and member of the Academia Leopoldina, mapped the molecular links between lifestyle, chronic liver inflammation and hepatocellular carcinoma — and showed that an intermittent fasting regimen (5:2) can prevent disease progression, with a pharmacological agent capable of replicating key aspects of the hepatic fasting response.
PD Dr. Mahshid Sotoudeh, senior scientist at the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), reframed nutrition as a socio-technical challenge: the question is not merely what is healthy, but what structural conditions make healthy choices possible — and what systemic interventions are required to create them.
In cooperation with DPU (Austria)
Prof. h. c. M. B. Wagner-Pischel, President and CEO
www.dp-uni.ac.at
