As a recognition for their discovery of one of the foundations of our immune system, doctor Andrea Ablasser, virologist Glen Barber and biochemist Zhijian J. Chen today will receive the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 2025, endowed with € 120,000, in Frankfurt’s Paulkirche. The signal route they discovered protects us as an alarm system against infections or cancer, but at the same time is also susceptible to harmful false alarms. Medicines that disrupt this signal route are already being developed. This year’s Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter goes to biologist Tobias Ackels for his discovery that mammals smell faster than they breathe – which opens a new door to understand the brain function.
Neither strange nor our own DNA has things in the plasma of our cells. All foreign genetic information that appears here comes from viruses or bacteria, while our own DNA can enter the plasma from the cell nucleus or cell plants (mitochondria) as a result of cancer or cellular stress. The CGAS sensor recognizes this danger: when the DNA encounters in the plasma, it clamps it and forms the Messenger -substance CGAmp, which -after teaching on the signal transucer Sting -then activates a immune system 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 stitch inhibitor. Many biotech and pharmaceutical companies are now working on developing CGAs and angelantagonists, who can prove to be effective agents against diseases in which the CGAS-Stingalarm is cheating against the patient’s own body. A CGAS antagonist for the treatment of the widespread car -immune disease lupus erythematosus must introduce phase II clinical examinations this spring. Conversely, nearly 20 Sting activists are the effect of established cancerimmunotherapies currently in the early phases of clinical development worldwide. By activating the DNA alarm, these activators are able to transform so-called “cold tumors” that do not respond to checkpoint inhibitors only in “hot tumors” that are susceptible to immune attack and can be destroyed by T cells.
With the discovery and mapping the CGAS-Sting-Signeringroute, the prize winners have opened completely new approaches of drug research. This opens the possibility of medicine to treat infections, cancer and car -immune diseases more effectively than before. “
Thomas Boehm, chairman of the scientific council of Paul Ehrlich Foundation
Olfactie fundamentally differs from all other senses, because it is closely linked to emotions and memories. A “pin” was previously considered the smallest information processing unit for scents – an assumption that has now been refuted by the winner of the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Bowelstaedter Early Career Award. With the help of a self -constructed odor delivery device, Tobias Ackels have for the first time experimentally recorded how mice observe scents. He discovered that they smell faster than they breathe. The nocturnal animals can extract new information from dynamic odor clouds up to 40 times per second, with small time intervals to distract an image of the room. Because scent is the most primary sense in evolutionary terms, understanding it is probably the key to unlock the functioning of the entire brain. This applies in particular to the connection between odor and memory, which investigates Ackels. Olfactory disorders could serve as biomarkers for the early detection of dementia.