The 2015 LOUIS-JEANTET PRIZE FOR MEDICINE is awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier, Head of the Department Regulation in Infection Biology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany and Guest Professor at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine, Ume University, Sweden, and to RUDOLF ZECHNER, Professor of Biochemistry, Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, Austria.

The LOUIS-JEANTET FOUNDATION grants the sum of CHF 700'000 for each of the two prizes, of which CHF 625'000 is for the continuation of the prize-winner's work and CHF 75'000 for their personal use.

THE PRIZE-WINNERS are conducting fundamental biological research that is expected to be of considerable significance for medicine.

Emmanuelle Charpentier of France is awarded the 2015 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine for her contribution in harnessing an ancient mechanism of bacterial immunity into a powerful technology for editing genomes.

Bacterial pathogens also possess an immune system that defends them against predators, and particularly viruses. When studying this system, Emmanuelle Charpentier's team unravelled a unique mechanism - CRISPR-Cas9 - a pair of molecular scissors composed of a duplex of two RNAs linked to a protein. The system was harnessed into a new tool that makes genome editing within the cell almost like child's play. It is a revolution for biology, and certainly also for medicine.

Emmanuelle Charpentier will use the prize money to conduct further research on the mechanisms governing the pathogenicity of a streptococcus, namely Streptococcus pyogenes.

RUDOLF ZECHNER of Austria is awarded the 2015 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine for his contribution to our understanding of the vital role of lipids metabolism in the development of certain diseases.

Obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease: these illnesses that have become worldwide epidemics are often caused by dysfunctions of lipid metabolism. Rudolf Zechner and his colleagues discovered a new enzyme (adipose triglyceride lipase or ATGL), which plays a key role in this metabolism, degrading the fats and extracting the energy from nutrients. They also demonstrated that ATGL is involved in cachexia, an irreversible weight loss that affects numerous cancer patients, thus opening the way to new forms of treatment for this pathology.

Rudolf Zechner will use the prize money to study the (patho)physiological role of known and new enzymes involved in lipid metabolism

THE AWARD CEREMONY will be held in Geneva (Switzerland) on Wednesday, 22 April 2015.

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The Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine