Group Leader Meri Huch of the Wellcome Trust/ Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute has been awarded this year's BINDER Innovation Prize by the German Society for Cell Biology, for her world-leading research on 'Liver organoids for the study of liver biology and disease'.
Meri Huch received the BINDER Innovation Prize 2019 during a ceremony at the Fall Conference of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the German Society for Cell Biology (DGZ), in Tübingen, Germany.
The award is given for outstanding cell biological research with a focus on cell culture or the use of cell cultures. Meri wins this year's award for her world-leading research on 'Liver organoids for the study of liver biology and disease'.
Meri's research career already includes a number of 'firsts': she isolated the stem cells responsible for the rapid turnover of the adult stomach, creating “mini-stomach” structures (organoids) in vitro; she found that liver progenitor cells can be expanded without limit in vitro and can be used as a source of liver tissue for future cell therapy interventions for liver diseases; and she showed that adult pancreas cells can be expanded long-term in vitro. More recently she demonstrated the creation of patient-specific liver 'tumouroids'.
On 1st October Meri Huch moves to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, as one of the first recipients of the Lise Meitner Excellence Program from the Max Planck Society.
The BINDER Innovation Prize, endowed with EUR 4000, is founded by BINDER GmbH, the world's largest specialist in simulation chambers for scientific and industrial laboratories. The annual prize has been awarded since 1998 by the DGZ.