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Jürg Gertsch, PhD

Jürg Gertsch studied cultural anthropology at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), and neurosciences and biochemistry at the University of Sussex (UK) and the Biozentrum Basel. He received his M.Sc. in Biochemistry (1997) and his Dr.sc.nat. in pharmacognosy, ethnobotany, and natural product chemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 2002, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Otto Sticher and Prof. Dr. Sir Ghillean Prance (Kew Gardens, London).

Between 2003 and 2009, he was a postdoctoral researcher and later group leader at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the laboratory of Prof. Karl-Heinz Altmann at ETH Zurich. Between 2009 and 2013, he was an assistant professor of membrane biochemistry, and since 2014 he has been a full professor of Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Biology at the Medical Faculty of the University of Bern.

Dr. Gertsch’s research group focuses on the molecular pharmacology of the endocannabinoid system, general drug discovery, cannabinoid pharmacology, and translational research. The group conducts molecular pharmacological research at the interface of biochemistry, chemical biology, and neuropharmacology, with a strong emphasis on translation. Since 2014, he has served as deputy and co-director of the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bern. He has co-organized IMCCB-25 in Bern and is a co-chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Cannabinoid Function in the CNS in 2027. He is a co-founder of Synendos Therapeutics and Tasteomics.