Director of the University Clinic and Polyclinic for Visceral, Vascular, and Endocrine Surgery at the University Hospital Halle, Germany.

Prof. Kleeff began his medical training in 1990 with the preclinical part of his medical studies at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen. After completing his basic education, he moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich and successfully completed his medical studies in 1996 with the 3rd state examination. In 1997 he received his doctorate on the subject: “Diagnostic methods and epidemiology of HTLV-I/II in Germany” at the Max von Pettenkofer Institute of the LMU Munich.

Prof. Kleeff laid the foundation for his scientific work during a two-year research stay in Murray Korc’s laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. He completed his specialist training at the Clinic for Visceral and Transplant Surgery at the Inselspital in Bern/Switzerland and at the Clinic for General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery at the University of Heidelberg, each under the supervision of Markus Büchler. In 2005 he habilitated at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg on the topic “Mechanisms of aggressiveness of pancreatic carcinoma at the molecular level – the TGF-beta signaling pathway” and received the venia legendi for the subject surgery. In 2007 Dr. Kleeff moved to the surgical clinic and polyclinic of the Klinikum Rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich under the direction of Helmut Friess. After another stay abroad as a consultant in hepatobiliary, pancreatic, and general surgery at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals in Liverpool/UK, Dr. Kleeff was offered the chair for visceral surgery at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 2017.

Prof. Kleeff is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons, a member of national and international professional societies, and the author of numerous scientific papers. His clinical research focus is on the evidence-based improvement of modern multimodal surgical-oncological therapy concepts for gastrointestinal tumors, especially in the field of pancreatic carcinoma surgery. Regarding basic science, Prof. Kleeff deals with pancreatic carcinogenesis and pancreatic carcinoma biology, the stromal reaction, inflammation/regeneration, and preclinical studies.