The Prize ceremony took place at the annual reception of the Medical Faculty on the 20th of July. The 50,000 euros Prize honors best original works from research projects in the field of experimental or clinical medicine at LMU 2018/19.
The scientific work of the three winners, was published in Nature in early May 2019. Together with an international team, the researchers were able to show how neutrophil granulocytes, the most common leukocyte population in humans, trigger a previously unrecognized type of induced cell death after their activation and infiltration into the tissue. They identified a mechanism based on the cytotoxic effects of externalized histone H4. They were also able to generate an inhibitory peptide through molecular modeling that can abbrogate the cytotoxic effects of histone H4. The effectiveness of this inhibitor has already been successfully confirmed in animal models of atherosclerosis and patent is pending.
