Axel Radlach Pries is a German professor of physiology and, since 2015, Dean of the board of Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany and President of the World Health Summit.

In 1979 Pries passed his medical examination at the University of Cologne in Germany. In the following year, he received his doctoral degree summa cum laude. Until 1983, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cologne and then moved to the Institute of Physiology of the Freie Universität Berlin. In 1990, Pries finished his habilitation and became associate professor in 1995. From 1997 to 1998 Pries was employed as Senior Physician for Anaesthesiology at the German Heart Center Berlin (DHZB). In 1998 he became a Full professor at the Institute for Physiology of the Freie Universität Berlin and from 2001 to 2015 Head of the Institute for Physiology of the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

From 1996 to 2011 Pries was General Secretary of the German Society for Microcirculation and vascular biology, and General Secretary for the European Society for Microcirculation from 1998 to 2011. From 2006 to 2015 he was chair of the International Liaison Committee for Microcirculation (ILCM). Pries took various leading roles in the European Society of Cardiology: from 1998 to 2000 he was the Chairman of the Working Group on Coronary Pathophysiology and Microcirculation, from 2005 to 2010 and later from 2012 to 2014 he was a Basic Science Coordinator in the Congress Programme Committee. From 2010 to 2012 he was the Chairman of the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science. Pries was Chairman of the International Liaison Committee for Microcirculation from 2006 to 2015. From 2016 to 2021, he was a member of the Board of the Biomedical Alliance in Europe, the association of leading biomedical societies in Europe and its president from 2018 to 2019.

From 2015 to 2022, Pries was Dean and member of the board of Charité hospital in Berlin, from 2018 to 2020 he led the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) as interim CEO. In 2021, he became president of the World Health Summit. In 2023 he was appointed as Prorector for Medicine at the Danube Private University.