Presentation of the 2016 Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigator to Adrian Liston

In 2016, Eppendorf AG, the Hamburg life science company is presenting its highly prestigious research prize for the 21st time. The independent Eppendorf Award Jury chaired by Prof. Reinhard Jahn selected Prof. Adrian Liston (Group leader at VIB Translational Immunology Lab, University of Leuven, Belgium) as the 2016 winner of the Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators.

The Award ceremony took place at the EMBL Advanced Training Centre in Heidelberg, Germany, on June 2, 2016. The laudatio honoring Adrian Liston’s achievements was held by the jury chairman Prof. Reinhard Jahn.

Adrian Liston, born 1980, receives the € 20,000 prize for his seminal work in elucidating key mechanisms by which the immune system avoids attacking its own organism while remaining effective against pathogens. His experiments have paved the way for understanding key steps in controlling regulatory T-cells that are critical for balancing between autoimmunity and immunosuppression. His work opens up the way for new therapeutic approaches towards diseases resulting from a dysregulated immune homeostasis.

Adrian Liston: “My laboratory studies the genetic basis of immune disease through a multi-disciplinary approach that assesses the entire cascade of events leading to disease. We use genetic approaches to identify new mutations causing primary immunodeficiencies, cellular and biochemical immunology approaches to determine the impact of these mutations on the tolerance checkpoints, and disease modelling approaches to study the process of tissue destruction that leads to pathology.

Our mission is to identify the most sensitive intervention point in the disease pathway for the development of effective therapeutics. The 2016 Eppendorf Award is a great recognition of the work done by all of the amazing people in my team. I see this prize as a validation of our philosophy to keep a broad perspective of immune diseases rather than focusing in on a single pathway or technique.”

With the Eppendorf Young Investigator Award, which was established in 1995, Eppendorf AG honors outstanding work in biomedical research and supports young scientists in Europe up to the age of 35. The Eppendorf Award is presented in partnership with the scientific journal Nature. The Award winner is selected by an independent committee composed of Prof. Reinhard Jahn (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany), Prof. Dieter Häussinger (Clinic for Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectiology, Düsseldorf, Germany), Prof. Maria Leptin (EMBO, Heidelberg, Germany), and Prof. Martin J. Lohse (Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin, Germany).