Klaus Früh received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1990. From 1991 to 1994 he was a postdoctoral scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. In 1994 he joined the R.W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute, where he directed the antiviral pharmaceutical research program. In 2000 he joined the OHSU Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute as associate professor and ONPRC as associate scientist, at the same time becoming director of the Microarray Shared Resource. He was promoted to Professor and Senior Scientist in 2005.

Dr. Früh is also co-founder and board member of VIR Biotechnology, a biotechnology company that harnesses the power of the immune system to prevent and treat infectious diseases.

Dr. Früh’s research focuses on understanding the molecular interaction between viral pathogens and their hosts, particularly the identification and characterization of viral gene products that modulate the innate and adaptive immune responses. This knowledge is translated into the development and improvement of cytomegalovirus (CMV)-vectored vaccines which are unique in their ability to persistently maintain an immune shield of so called effector memory T cells, including highly unconventional (MHC-II and MHC-E) restricted CD8+ T cells. CMV vectored vaccines have shown unprecedented protection in non-human primate models of AIDS and TB, and this novel vector concept is currently developed for both prophylactic and therapeutic vaccination against a number of chronic viral, bacterial and parasitic diseases as well as cancer.