Dr Meritxell Huch, Group Leader at the Wellcome Trust/ Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, has been awarded a Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence 2015-2016 for her work on liver disorders.
Dr Huch has pioneered a liver tissue culture system that provides a platform for drug testing and toxicity studies as well as research into liver regeneration, with the potential to dramatically reduce the number of animal samples needed for such studies.
She is one of three winners of this year's Hamdan Awards for Medical Research Excellence who are "honored for the innovative methods and research that resulted in novel discoveries and inventions, which have made an enormous impact in their fields. This award has been established to honor and recognize the contributions of distinguished researchers whose works have positively affected thousands of lives globally".
“I am extremely delighted, and very positively surprised at having been awarded the Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence," said Dr Huch. "It is an honour that, from all the excellent scientists studying liver biology and disease, the committee selected and valued our work on liver regeneration and our innovative human liver organoid cultures, for their potential to improve understanding of human liver biology and disease.”
Each winner will receive AED 100,000 (around £22,000) at a ceremony in December in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The award’s patron, Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is Deputy Ruler of Dubai and UAE Minister of Finance, and also president of the Dubai Health Authority.