In recognition of their discovery of one of our immune system's foundations, physician Andrea Ablasser, virologist Glen Barber and biochemist Zhijian J. Chen will be awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 2025, endowed with €120,000, in Frankfurt's Paulskirche today. The signaling pathway they discovered protects us like an alarm system against infections or cancer, but at the same time is also susceptible to harmful false alarms. Drugs interfering with this signaling pathway are already being developed. This year's Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award goes to biologist Tobias Ackels for his discovery that mammals smell faster than they breathe - which opens a new door to understanding brain function.
FRANKFURT - Neither foreign nor our own DNA has any business in our cells' plasma. Any foreign genetic information that appears here comes from viruses or bacteria, while our own DNA can enter the plasma from the cell nucleus or the cell power plants (mitochondria) as a result of cancer or cellular stress. The cGAS sensor recognizes this danger: When it encounters DNA in the plasma, it clasps it and forms the messenger substance cGAMP, which - after docking onto the signal transducer STING -then triggers a defense reaction of the immune system. cGAS and cGAMP were discovered by Zhijian J. Chen, STING by Glen Barber. Andrea Ablasser characterized cGAMP in detail and synthesized the first STING inhibitor. Many biotech and pharmaceutical companies are now working on developing cGAS and STING antagonists, which could prove to be effective agents against diseases in which the cGAS-STING alarm is falsely directed against the patient's own body. A cGAS antagonist for the treatment of the widespread autoimmune disease lupus erythematosus is due to enter phase II clinical trials this spring. Conversely, almost 20 STING activators that enhance the effect of established cancer immunotherapies are currently in early phases of clinical development worldwide. By triggering the DNA alarm, these activators are capable of transforming so-called "cold tumors" that do not respond to checkpoint inhibitors alone into "hot tumors" that are susceptible to immune attack and can be destroyed by T cells. "With the discovery and mapping of the cGAS-STING signaling pathway, the award winners have opened up completely new approaches to drug research," explains Thomas Boehm, Chairman of Paul Ehrlich Foundation's Scientific Council. "This opens up the possibility for medicine to treat infections, cancer and autoimmune diseases more effectively than before."
Olfaction is fundamentally different from all other senses, as it is closely linked to emotions and memories. A "sniff" was previously considered to be the smallest information processing unit for odors - an assumption that has now been disproved by the winner of the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award. Using a self-constructed odor delivery device, Tobias Ackels experimentally recorded for the first time how mice perceive odors. He discovered that they smell faster than they breathe. The nocturnal animals can extract new information from dynamic scent clouds up to 40 times per second, using tiny time intervals to derive an image of the space. Since smell is the most primal sense in evolutionary terms, understanding it is probably key to unlocking the functioning of the entire brain. This applies in particular to the connection between smell and memory, which Ackels is researching. Olfactory disorders could serve as biomarkers for the early detection of dementia.
Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 2025
Andrea Ablasser, born in 1983, is Professor of Life Sciences at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. https://www.epfl.ch/labs/ablasserlab/
Glen Barber, born in 1962, is a professor in the Department of Surgery at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA, where he heads the Center for Innate Immunity and Inflammation.
https://cancer.osu.edu/for-cancer-researchers/research/research-labs/barber-lab
Zhijian J. Chen, born in 1966, is George L. MacGregor Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science, Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, USA. https://labs.utsouthwestern.edu/chen-zhijian-james-lab
Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award 2025
Tobias Ackels, born in 1984, is a W2 professor at the Institute of Experimental Epileptology and Cognitive Research at the University of Bonn and heads the "Sensory Dynamics and Behavior" group. https://ackelslab.com
