Christoph Cremer receives the David Glick Lectureship Award

Prof. Christoph Cremer, an emeritus Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz, Germany, has been awarded the David Glick Lectureship Award by the International Federation of Societies for Histochemistry and Cytochemistry. The award recognises his achievements in developing super-resolution microscopy methods that allow scientists to visualise cellular structures at unprecedented resolution.

The David Glick award is presented once every four years at the International Congress of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry to honour prominent histochemists or cytochemists who have made significant contributions to advancing the field of quantitative histochemistry. IMB is proud that Christoph Cremer has been selected as the recipient for 2025. 

Christoph’s research focuses on developing cutting-edge super-resolution light microscopy approaches to visualise chromatin nanostructures in the mammalian nucleus at single-molecule resolution. Such techniques have a much higher resolution than conventional methods and allowed scientists in his team and beyond to gain a greater understanding of how cells organise their DNA in the nucleus to precisely regulate genes in time and space.

“The spatio-temporal folding pattern of the nuclear chromatin has emerged as a key parameter for transcriptional control and hence for gene regulation”, Christoph says. “A wealth of information on this subject has been obtained from a variety of biochemical approaches. An understanding of these mechanisms has to be complemented by information on absolute distances, positions and structures, sizes, or DNA densities at the single-cell level. Such topographical information can now be obtained by a variety of super-resolution microscopy methods, down to the sub-nanometre resolution range.”

Candidates are nominated by the member societies of the International Federation, and the winner is selected by the Executive Board of the Federation and a representative of the Histochemical Society. As part of the award, Christoph will give the plenary Glick Lecture at the 17^th International Congress of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry held in Rimini, Italy, and receive a cash prize. He joins a list of highly distinguished scientists – previous awardees include Stefan Hell, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014 for the development of super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, Roger Tsien, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for discovering and developing green fluorescent protein as a revolutionary way to visualise proteins in living cells, and David Glick, who was a founder of the Histochemical Society and a pioneer in quantitative histochemistry. 

IMB warmly congratulates Christoph on his achievement.

_{Further details}

_{Further information can be found here.} 

_{Christoph Cremer is an emeritus Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) and an associate researcher of the Microscopy and Histology Core Facility. Further information about Christoph’s research can be found at www.imb.de/research/emeritus/cremer/research.}

_{About the Institute of Molecular Biology gGmbH} 

_{The Institute of Molecular Biology gGmbH (IMB) is a centre of excellence in the life sciences that was established in 2011 on the campus of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). Research at IMB focuses on the cutting-edge fields of epigenetics, genome stability, ageing and RNA biology. The institute is a prime example of successful collaboration between a private foundation and government: The Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation has committed 154 million euros to be disbursed from 2009 until 2027 to cover the operating costs of research at IMB. The State of Rhineland-Palatinate has provided approximately 50 million euros for the construction of a state-of-the-art building and is giving a further 52 million in core funding from 2020 until 2027. For more information about IMB, please visit: www.imb.de.}

_{Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation}

_{The Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization that is committed to promoting the medical, biological, chemical, and pharmaceutical sciences. It was established in 1977 by Hubertus Liebrecht (1931–1991), a member of the shareholder family of the Boehringer Ingelheim company. Through its funding programmes Exploration Grants, Plus 3, and Rise up!, the Foundation supports excellent scientists during critical stages of their careers. It also endows the prestigious Heinrich Wieland Prize and awards for emerging scientists. Additionally, it funds institutional projects combining AI and biomedicine, such as the AITHYRA institute in Vienna and a new research unit at the Center for Systems Biology in Dresden (BioAI Dresden). Other supported institutions include the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, both in Germany.}

_{Press contact for further information}

_{Dr Ralf Dahm, Director of Scientific Management}

_{Institute of Molecular Biology gGmbH (IMB), Ackermannweg 4, 55128 Mainz, Germany} 

_{Phone: +49 (0) 6131 39 21455, Email: press(at)imb.de}