Cloëtta Prize 2024, awarded to Professor Andrea Alimonti
Institutional Communication Service
The ceremony for the Cloëtta 2024 Prize took place on 29 November at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). The prize was awarded to Professor Andrea Alimonti, Full Professor at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences of Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) and Director of the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR). He received this honour for his significant contributions to research in innovative cancer treatments.
Professor Andrea Alimonti is a renowned oncologist recognized worldwide for his research on cellular senescence and its involvement in cancer development. His groundbreaking studies demonstrate how inducing cellular senescence can hinder the growth of cancer cells and how the immune response can be specifically activated to target tumours.
Professor Alimonti has made an important contribution to the understanding of the role of myeloid cells in prostate cancer progression and resistance to standard therapies. He has also discovered new resistance mechanisms to therapies linked to the gut microbiome and developed innovative strategies to overcome this resistance. The strategies developed by the Professor are not only theoretical but are already the subject of several clinical trials, in particular for the treatment of metastatic prostate cancer. Therefore, Professor Alimonti's work represents a major advance in translational cancer research and can potentially transform clinical practice in the long term.
Each year, the Prof. Dr Max Cloëtta Foundation awards a prize to honour national and international personalities who have made significant contributions to research development in specific areas of medical research. The Foundation Board is responsible for selecting the awardees and, if necessary, consulting independent experts. This year, in addition to Professor Alimonti, Prof. Andrea Ablasser, Full Professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), was honoured. Each prizewinner will receive an award of CHF 50,000 for outstanding scientific contributions.
