Axel Ullrich is a molecular biologist and cancer researcher, and the former director of the Molecular Biology Department at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Tübingen and his PhD at the University of Heidelberg, he moved to the University of California, San Francisco for postdoctoral work from 1975 to 1977. In 1979, he left the university and joined Genentech, where he remained until moving to the Max Planck Institute in 1988. In 1991 he co-founded Sugen, Inc. and later went on to form multiple other companies. He was also appointed the Research Director of the OncoGenome Laboratory of the Centre for Molecular Medicine in Singapore. In this interview, Ullrich discusses his time in the biochemistry department at UC San Francisco, the controversies with the NIH Guidelines for Recombinant DNA Research and with his and Peter Seeburg’s move from UCSF to Genentech, his later career at Genentech, and his work with the human insulin project and other research.