Racing time for patients

For Prof. Torsten Zuberbier, time is health. The energetic 63-year-old is all about efficiency and progress when it comes to his patients. The first time we connected with him over a Teams call in the summer of 2025, Zuberbier used a 30-minute cab drive to squeeze us into his busy agenda and talk about his work. His daily routine is packed to the brim. But he seems unencumbered and always full of vitality as he steers his way between consulting patients, overseeing the Institute of Allergology at Charité University Medicine Berlin and orchestrating research at the location for Immunology and Allergology (IA) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP – among many other things.

Zuberbier knows why speed is of the essence: “People with urticaria, for example, they can’t concentrate, they can’t sleep properly. It’s an incredibly stressful disease, often worse than pain,” he says. “About 20 percent of the affected are so immensely impacted that they need new medicines.” His career has been dedicated to these patients ever since he started his doctoral thesis on mast-cell driven disease – a medical subject that came to him by chance but sparked a lifelong scientific curiosity. Today, he and his team are focusing on conditions such as urticaria, atopic dermatitis, respiratory and food allergies, and allergic rhinitis, among others. Zuberbier is also acutely aware that many of the patients suffering from dermatological and allergic diseases often do not receive the attention their condition deserves. “Allergic diseases are often still trivialized. Many think that cancer and heart disease are more important, but they don’t see how much patients suffer. We need to raise our voices together to stop this trivialization.”

Creating collaboration spaces Zuberbier has moved heaven and earth in this respect; not only as a doctor treating individual patients at the Charité – which he does to this day. He is also overseeing clinical trials and basic research. And, above all, he is working hard to bring together experts from around the world to concentrate scientific and medical efforts to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying causes that drive diseases such as urticaria. To this end, Zuberbier founded the Global Allergy and Asthma Excellence Network, which he also leads as president. Furthermore, he is also Chairman of the European Centre for Allergy Research Foundation (ECARF). Both groups bring together some of the leading minds in the industry to conduct groundbreaking research. “We are embedded in a worldwide research network with more than 500 institutions worldwide. We’re rowing in the same boat: academia and companies must bring their brains together to get better drugs,” Zuberbier said with emphasis.

Jörg Scheffel from the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP.

Such multi-stakeholder collaboration, he is convinced, will lead to strong results. “Only when you come together and talk do the best ideas come. Often, it’s not straight ahead, sometimes a door opens to the right or left, and we must use it.” With more than 200 associates, the Institute of Allergology at Charité is a major innovation hub. Together with his colleague Martin Metz, Head of Translational Research and Clinical Studies, Zuberbier has made clinical trials one of the institute’s cornerstones – including collaborations with Novartis. Although the trial site, which is located in Charité’s former nurses’ home, looks a bit dated, the place was teeming with energy when we were welcomed in late summer by Study Assistance Leader Janine Ruhe and Head of Translation Hanna Bonnekoh, who carved out half an hour in their busy schedule to show us the place.

Both were not only proud of the work done at the institute, but were inspired by its vision, even though they all had to stomach a major setback when co-founder Prof. Marcus Maurer tragically died during a hiking trip in Switzerland in 2024. Although it left the team saddened, they have since regained their old optimism and drive for innovation. Study nurses and doctors were administering treatments to patients and working on trial documentation in the many adjacent rooms along an elongated hallway, which sported a series of offices and patient cabinets and a room with all the prepared medications for an ongoing urticaria trial. We even briefly met a study monitor who was quietly going through the clinical data and gave a friendly nod of the head after Ruhe knocked on the door to the small cabinet in which she worked. “All looking great,” she said with a smile as we left her to resume her work. For Global Program Head Tom Severin, who has been working with Charité on clinical programs for many years, seeing the colleagues busy at work was another tell-tale sign that institutes such as Charité are crucial when it comes to advancing science and medicine. “Collaboration is extremely important in drug discovery and drug development,” Severin said. “We need to understand the diseases, the medical need, and work together with leading scientists and clinicians who treat patients. Together we can develop new medicines.”

Basic research When we visited the nearby location for Immunology and Allergology (IA) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, which is located a few steps from Charité’s main building in a massive brutalist edifice from the 1970s, Severin was also impressed by the basic science conducted there. The institute, with its 40 staff, including 15 Ph.D. students, is currently running some 80 projects, said Jörg Scheffel, who, together with Stefan Frischbutter, heads the Basic Science efforts at Fraunhofer. Asked what makes his focus on mast-cell research fascinating, Scheffel was very much to the point: “Mast cells are the only cells that can kill a human being. This, together with their intricate complexity as well as wide-ranging biological functions, makes them an exciting study object.” As Scheffel walked us through the building, we were especially struck by the inventiveness of the team, which, among other things, has co-developed a new microneedling device to extract cell fluids by reversing the mechanism of a classic injection device. For Severin, such a device can be crucial for upcoming clinical trials. “With this device, one can investigate fluid directly from a lesion in the skin and measure antibodies and better understand the disease, an exciting step towards new ways to help patients.” “The collaboration with Charité is very important for us,” Severin explained. “Charité is not only one of our study centers but also at the forefront of allergy research worldwide. Together we are co-creating new insights into immunology and developing ideas that will advance science.”

Tom Severin from Novartis knows how to keep his calm when running long and complex clinical trials.

Patients at the center For Torsten Zuberbier, all the scientific and medical efforts have one goal: to benefit patients. “We inform all the patients who come to us that we are a research institution. The patients are the winners in the end.” “What drives me is to sit in front of a patient and say: Yes, I have a new idea again, and yes, I can help with that. That makes me incredibly happy,” Zuberbier says with a broad smile as the thought of helping patients seems to further energize him. To achieve his vision, Zuberbier fully embraces the ever-increasing collaboration between academia and industry, which 20 years ago was less pronounced and often marked by a certain distance between these two major healthcare players. But many have come to understand that, without a close working relationship, patients are set to lose in the end. Because without new medical and scientific innovations, patients are at risk of being left behind. But even the most recent progress is just a stepping stone for Zuberbier, who has already set his eyes on new goals that would allow immunology and allergology to move closer to personalized medicine.

Care Patient mindset. Racing time for patients Text Goran Mijuk. Photos Jérôme Depierre and Annick Ramp. Videos Goran Mijuk. Prof. Torsten Zuberbier has dedicated his career to patients with allergies and skin diseases. From leading the Institute of Allergology at Charité to running global research networks, he drives progress on all fronts. His mission: to accelerate the path from lab discovery to effective therapies. Collaboration with academia, industry, and patients themselves fuels his work. Now Zuberbier is pushing toward the next frontier: personalized medicine – together with Novartis.

“Only when you come together and talk do the best ideas come.” Prof. Torsten Zuberbier

The clinical trial team at Berlin's Charité during a busy morning in 2025.

Besides using classic pipetting devices, ...

... researchers at the Frauenhofer institute have developed a new microneedling device to extract cell fluids by re­versing the mechanism of a classic injection device.