Dr. Schröder graduated in chemistry, received his diploma in chemistry 1976, and finished 1980 his Doctoral thesis in Organic Chemistry. 1979 he joined the Dpt. of Dermatology at the Kiel University as research assistant to study the role of neutrophils and chemotaxins in psoriasis. In 1984 he discovered in psoriatic scale extracts a novel chemotactic peptide, later named Interleukin 8 or CXCL-8. In 1994 Dr. Schröder was appointed as professor for the biochemistry of inflammation and became head of a Clinical Research Unit until his retirement in 2015. After discovery of the first human inducible peptide antibiotic beta-defensin-2 in 1997, again isolated from psoriatic scales, and the discovery of several other antimicrobial peptides from human skin, he became founder and thereafter speaker of the collaborative research center (SFB) “Molecular Mechanisms of Epithelial Defense” and later a co-founder of the Excellence Initiative “Inflammation at Interfaces”. 2011 he organized as co-chair a Gordon Research Conference on “Antimicrobial Peptides”. He has been a member of the editorial board of various international journals, received several prestigious awards and is member of the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina.

He discovered or co-discovered several important molecules or its function, among them the chemokines IL-8, Gro-alpha, RANTES, Eotaxin, the antimicrobial peptides hBD-2, hBD-3, RNase-7, Psoriasin, cationic intrinsically disordered antimicrobial peptides (CIDAMPs) like Hornerin and Filaggrin-2, and the protease-inhibitors elafin, SPINK-9, SPINK-6, as well as chemotic lipids like 5-oxo-eicosanoids and a fungal diacylated urea. He contributed to the understanding of the role of ß-defensins as factors linking innate and adaptive immunity as well as understanding the role of cathelicidin in the psoriasis pathogenesis. He received the prestigious high risk “Reinhart-Koselleck”-grant of the DFG to investigate “resistance-avoiding antimicrobial principles of healthy human skin”.

Most of his discovered molecules were purified from lesional psoriatic scale extracts and subsequently characterized.