medicine
Paul Ehrlich Prize awarded to immune researcher Dennis Kasper
The American doctor Dennis Kasper in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. photo
© Helmut Fricke/dpa
Because he discovered a bacterial language, the American Dennis Kasper was awarded the prestigious Paul Ehrlich Prize. The young talent award went to a German researcher.
The American immunologist Dennis Kasper (80) has been awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 2024 for his research work. He accepted the award, worth 120,000 euros, on Thursday evening in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche.
According to the board of trustees, Kasper decoded words from a biochemical language that bacteria that populate the human gut use to educate the immune system. Thanks to his research, concrete starting points for the treatment of severe autoimmune diseases have already emerged, as the board of trustees stated in Frankfurt announced.
Kasper has been a professor of medicine since 1989 and a professor of immunology at Harvard Medical School (Boston) since 1997. He is co-editor of “Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine”, which, according to the board of trustees, is the most widely used medical textbook in the world.
The Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize is one of the most prestigious medical prizes in Germany. It has been awarded since 1952. The award is traditionally presented on the birthday of Nobel Prize winner Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), March 14th, in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche.
The chemist Johannes Karges from the Ruhr University Bochum received the young talent prize worth 60,000 euros. The 31-year-old was honored for his research on chemotherapy. This could drastically reduce the side effects of chemotherapy against cancer and significantly increase its effectiveness.