Sartorius & Science Prize presented to young scientists
Joana Neves is the 2019 grand prize winner of the Sartorius & Science Prize for Regenerative Medicine & Cell Therapy. The prize was presented to her and the two finalists virtually during an online ceremony on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.
This article is posted on our Sartorius Blog.
Neves received the award for her work that offers a promising approach to improve the outcome of regenerative stem cell-based therapies aimed at delaying age-related degenerative diseases.
"We are living in the bio-century, and at Sartorius our goal is to enable new life-science based discoveries that can be translated quickly into effective patient care. With technologies, platforms and partnerships we work for a common goal: better health for more people. It's an honor for Sartorius to celebrate the exceptional scientists who have achieved remarkable results at the forefront of stem cell research that opens doors for further progress in healthcare for the 21st century," said Sartorius CEO, Dr. Joachim Kreuzburg.
"Joana Neves was motivated by the roadblocks that limit the success of regenerative therapies in older patients. She translated insight gained in fruit flies to an intervention in blind mice that restored visual function. Her work has the potential to improve outcomes in regenerative medicine," said Valda Vinson, research editor for Science. Neves' prize-winning essay, "Aging eyes and the immune system," was published in the March 13 issue of Science.
"I am convinced that biological aging is the biggest biomedical challenge of this century and that finding ways to intervene, to delay or reverse this process is the most promising approach to promote human health. I always wanted to do research that could have a real impact on peoples' lives. The best way to do that is identifying a clinical problem that is limiting the success of current therapeutic approaches and search for points of intervention that can change the success of these interventions," said Neves
Neves earned undergraduate degrees from NOVA University in Lisbon, Portugal and a Ph.D. from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in California, Neves started her lab in the Instituto de Medicina Molecular (iMM) at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon in 2019.
Established in 2017, the Sartorius & Science Prize for Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy is an annual prize geared toward researchers focused on basic or translational research that advances regenerative medicine and cell therapy, including cell-, gene-, or immunotherapy, tissue engineering, and materials engineering. The winner is awarded $25,000 and his or her essay is published in Science both in print and online; the finalists each receive $5,000 and their essays are published in Science (online).
Read more about Joana Neves' work
The 2019 Finalists
Arun Sharma, for his essay "Stem cells to help the heart." Sharma earned his undergraduate degree from Duke University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Medical School, Sharma is now a senior research fellow jointly appointed at the Smidt Heart Institute and Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. His research uses human induced pluripotent stem cells combined with CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to develop in vitro platforms for cardiovascular disease modeling and drug cardiotoxicity assessment.
Adam Wilkinson, for his essay "Hope for hematological diseases." Wilkinson received his undergraduate degree from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, California, where he is studying normal and malignant hematopoietic stem cell biology with the aim of improving the treatment of hematological diseases.
About AAAS
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science as well as Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling, a digital, open-access journal, Science Advances, Science Immunology, and Science Robotics. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS. See http://www.aaas.org.
