Top researchers in oncology are awarded the prestigious German Cancer Prize

30.03.2022 12:22

For their outstanding work in cancer medicine and research, Prof. Dr. Salah-Eddin Al-Batran (Northwest Hospital, Frankfurt am Main), Prof. Dr. Frank Winkler (German Cancer Research Center and Heidelberg University Hospital) and Prof. Dr. Mathias Heikenwälder (German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg), the German Cancer Prize 2022. The prize from the German Cancer Society and the German Cancer Foundation is one of the highest awards in oncology and is presented annually in the categories of “Clinical Research”, “Translational Research” and “Experimental Research”. " forgive.

Salah-Eddin Al-Batran built up one of the world's best research platforms for stomach and esophageal cancer as an assistant and senior physician and later as medical director at the Nordwest Hospital and head of the Institute for Clinical Cancer Research in Frankfurt. He developed FLOT therapy, a chemotherapy that is administered before and after surgery on tumors and significantly extends the patient's chances of survival compared to previous standard therapy. These results provided the impetus for a change in global treatment standards for stomach and esophageal cancer. Al-Batran and his working group initiated - also in collaboration with other scientific partners at home and abroad - a number of other groundbreaking phase III studies on gastric and esophageal cancer, including the DANTE, RENAISSANCE, PREVENT, and RACE studies. Study. In addition, they are working on building an interactive, modular platform for clinical biomarker research with defined interfaces and standardized processes. Salah-Eddin Al-Batran is honored for his work with the German Cancer Prize in the “Clinical Research” category.

Frank Winkler, the cancer prize winner in the “Translational Research” category, is working on fundamental questions that are important for better treatment of patients with brain tumors. His discoveries explain why certain types of brain tumors, such as glioblastomas, respond so poorly to common forms of therapy. These tumors grow diffusely into the healthy brain like a fungal network; They can hardly be completely removed through surgery and can withstand intensive chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Winkler discovered that the tumor cells communicate with each other in a large network, exchange substances that are essential for survival, and can thus evade radiation or chemotherapy. In addition, the tumor cells receive direct signals from healthy nerve cells - this allows the tumors to grow faster. The mechanisms that Winkler is investigating not only offer fundamentally new approaches to explaining the highly aggressive growth of this type of tumor. They also provide approaches for novel therapies to stop brain tumor growth and make existing therapies more effective.

In the “Experimental Research” category, Mathias Heikenwälder received the German Cancer Prize for his groundbreaking work on the role of chronic inflammation in the development of liver cancer, the fourth most common cause of cancer death. The basic researcher described for the first time a new mechanism by which hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses trigger chronic inflammation in the liver and cause liver cancer. Results from his laboratory also show that certain inflammatory signals can eliminate the genetic material of the hepatitis B virus and prevent it from replicating in a liver cell. Heikenwälder also succeeded in elucidating the molecular mechanisms involved in the metastasis of colon cancer to the liver. Particularly noteworthy are results from his laboratory that show how the transition from fatty liver to liver cancer is controlled by blood platelets and T cells and thus indicate how this pathological process can be stopped with medication. Heikenwälder's work opens up new perspectives for understanding the development of fatty liver disease and for liver cancer research.