The Cloëtta Prize

The Prof. Dr. Max Cloëtta Foundation annually awards a prize to honor national and international individuals who have made significant contributions to specific fields of medical research.

The Foundation Board is responsible for selecting the award recipients and consults independent experts as needed. The 2024 award ceremony took place on Friday, 29 November 2024, at EPFL. Since 1974, the Foundation’s Golden Book has honored prize recipients with a calligraphed page bearing their original signatures. Take a look at some of the pages: The Golden Book

Cloëtta Prize 2024 awarded to Andrea Ablasser and Andrea Alimonti
The Prof. Dr. Max Cloëtta Foundation awarded the Cloëtta Prize 2024 to two renowned scientists: Prof. Dr. Andrea Ablasser, Full Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Prof. Dr. Andrea Alimonti, Director of the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR) in Bellinzona and Professor of Experimental Oncology at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) and ETH Zurich. Both laureates receive CHF 50,000 each for their outstanding scientific contributions.

Andrea Ablasser
Andrea Ablasser has conducted groundbreaking work in immunology, particularly through the discovery of the cGAS-STING signaling pathway, which enables the innate immune system to detect pathogenic DNA from infectious agents and respond accordingly. Her research has provided fundamental insights into the mechanisms of immune defense, which play a crucial role not only in infections but also in inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases such as autoimmunity and Alzheimer’s disease.

Notably, her research focuses on the molecular foundations of regulating this signaling cascade to prevent excessive immune reactions. Her current work explores how these mechanisms can be leveraged for new therapeutic approaches, particularly in cancer immunotherapy. Her innovative studies could pave the way for novel treatments for challenging diseases and have profoundly shaped our understanding of immunobiology.

Andrea Alimonti
Andrea Alimonti is an internationally recognized oncologist whose research sheds light on the mechanisms of cellular senescence and its role in cancer development. His groundbreaking studies demonstrate how inducing senescence can suppress tumor cell growth and how the immune response can be specifically activated against tumors.

He has significantly contributed to understanding the role of myeloid-derived suppressor cells, which promote the progression of prostate cancer and resistance to standard therapies. Additionally, he has discovered novel mechanisms of therapy resistance linked to the gut microbiome and developed innovative strategies to overcome these resistances.