Kai Johnsson

Curriculum Vitae Prof. Kai Johnsson

Kai Johnsson is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Department of Chemical Biology since 2017. He was appointed after being Full Professor at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and co-director of the NCCR Chemical Biology. His current research interests are the development and application of chemical approaches to study and manipulate protein function. His past achievements include the introduction of different approaches to specifically label proteins in living cells; among these the SNAP-tag and CLIP-tag have become popular in the biological community.

Kai Johnsson is Executive Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society since 2021. He is co-founder of Covalys Biosciences which was based on protein labeling technologies developed in his laboratory; these technologies are now available through New England BioLabs. He received an ERC Synergy Grant in 2025, the Hansen Family Award in Medical Sciences of the Bayer Foundation in 2021,  the Karl-Heinz Beckurts Prize 2016, the Novartis Lectureship Award 2012/13 and the Prix APLE for the invention of the year 2003 of EPFL Lausanne. Kai Johnsson is elected member of EMBO.

 

Education

 

1992

PhD in Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

1988

Diploma in Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Positions

 

2017 –

Director; Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg, Germany, Head of the Department of Chemical Biology

2018 –

Affiliated Professor; Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland

2009 – 2017Full Professor; Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland

2005 – 2009

Associate Professor; Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland

1999 – 2005

Assistant Professor; Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland

1996 – 1999

Independent researcher; Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

1993 – 1996

Postdoctoral fellow; Department of Chemistry, UC Berkeley, USA

Commissions of Trust

 
2021  –  Executive Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society

2010 –

Editorial Board of Chemical Society Reviews

2008 –

Editorial Board of ChemBioChem

2006 –

Editorial Board of Chemistry & Biology

2012 – 2020Editorial Advisory Board of Science

2005 – 2020

Associate Editor of ACS Chemical Biology

2003 – 2010

Board of Directors, Covalys Biosciences, Switzerland

Memberships of Scientific Societies

 

2001 – 

Member, Swiss Chemical Society

1998 – 

Member, Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker

1996 –

Member, American Chemical Society

Institutional Responsibilities

 

2020 –

Member of the International Advisory Board of the Institut Curie; Paris

2016 – 2021

Member of the EMBL Scientific Advisory Committee

2012 – 2017

Member of the school-wide tenure committee of EPFL

2010 – 2017

Co-Director of the Swiss-wide research program  NCCR Chemical Biology  (budget of SFR 4 million per year)

2003 – 2015Member of the steering committee of Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, EPFL 

Fellowships and Awards

 

2025ERC Synergy Grant
2025Academia Sinica Chemical Biology Lecture; Taiwan

2022

XingDa Lecture; Peking University

2021

Hansen Family Award in Medical Sciences; Bayer Foundation

2019

Elected Member of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften

2016

Karl-Heinz-Beckurts-Preis

2015

AbbVie Lecture, UC Berkeley

2013

Elected Member of EMBO

2012Novartis Lectureship Award

2012

Leica Scientific Forum Lectureship Japan (Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo)

2011Amgen Lecture, UC Berkeley
2003Prix APLE for the invention of the year 2003 of EPFL Lausanne

Entrepreneurships

 

2014

Co-founder of Spirochome SA; development of new probes for fluorescence microscopy

2013

Co-founder of Quartet Medicine; development of new treatments for neuropathic pain

2003

Co-founder of Covalys Biosciences; development of tools for protein labeling

 

 

 

Representative Publications

Sun, D.-e. et al.
Molecular recording of cellular protein kinase activity with chemical labeling.
Nature Chemical Biology, 21, 1818–1827 (2025)
Source
DOI
Kühn, S. et al.
SNAP-tag2: faster and brighter protein labeling.
Nature Chemical Biology 21, 1754–1761 (2025)
Source
DOI
Huppertz, M. C. et al.
Recording physiological history of cells with chemical labeling.
Science 383, 890-897 (2024)
Source
DOI
Wang, L. et al.
A general strategy to develop cell permeable and fluorogenic probes for multicolour nanoscopy.
Nature Chemistry 12, 165-172 (2020)
Source
DOI
Yu, Q. et al.
Semisynthetic sensor proteins enable metabolic assays at the point of care.
Science 361, 1122-1126 (2018)
Source
DOI
Lukinavicius, G. et al.
Fluorogenic probes for live-cell imaging of the cytoskeleton.
Nature Methods 11, 731-733 (2014)
Source
DOI
Haruki, H., Pedersen, M. G., Gorska, K. I., Pojer, F. & Johnsson, K.
Tetrahydrobiopterin biosynthesis as an off-target of sulfa drugs.
Science 340, 987-991 (2013)
Source
DOI
Lukinavicius, G. et al.
A near-infrared fluorophore for live-cell super-resolution microscopy of cellular proteins.
Nature Chemistry 5, 132-139 (2013)
Source
DOI
Gautier, A. et al.
An engineered protein tag for multiprotein labeling in living cells.
Chemistry & Biology 15, 128-136 (2008)
Source
DOI
Keppler, A. et al.
A general method for the covalent labeling of fusion proteins with small molecules in vivo.
Nature Biotechnology 21, 86-89 (2003) 
Source
DOI
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
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