At the beginning of February, the fifth anniversary of the National Decade against Cancer was celebrated in Berlin. One of the declared goals of the initiative, which was launched by the German Federal Ministry of Science and Research (BMBF), is to promote young scientists and to develop cancer research in Germany for the future. To mark the anniversary, have now been awarded for the first time to young researchers for particularly innovative and forward-looking scientific work. Nearly 120 scientists applied for the awards, and six winners - three PhD students and three postdocs - were honored at the "Future X Change" conference in Berlin. The result is proof of the excellence and innovative strength of the local site - the majority of the awards went to researchers working at or associated with the NCT Heidelberg:
Category Postdocs
Nezha Suzanne Benabdallah has been researching at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Ana Banito's Soft Tissue Sarcoma Junior Research Group since 2019 and has uncovered fundamental mechanisms that enable therapeutic approaches for sarcoma patients. In 2024, she began a fellowship at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer at the University of Edinburgh.
María Paula Roberti is deputy head of the Clinical Cooperation Unit Applied Tumor Immunity headed by Dirk Jäger at the DKFZ and NCT Heidelberg. After completing her doctorate in Buenos Aires, she conducted research on colorectal cancer in France. Her research focuses primarily on immunotherapy and the modulation of the intestinal microbiota in cancer therapy.
Category doctoral students
Tilmann Hölting works as a junior doctor in the Department of Medical Oncology at Heidelberg University Hospital and at the NCT Heidelberg. His doctoral thesis focuses on Ewing sarcoma, the second most common malignant bone tumor, which mainly affects children and young adults. As a clinician scientist, he is researching the extent to which novel forms of therapy can be used for gene therapies or for Ewing's sarcoma.
Daniel Michaeli is a junior doctor in the Department of Medical Oncology at Heidelberg University Hospital and the NCT Heidelberg. He is in charge of the sarcoma consultation hours there. Parallel to his medical doctoral thesis, he is working on a doctoral thesis in health economics and is conducting research at the interface between oncological medicine, health policy and health economics.
Christina Stengl is working on her doctoral thesis in the Department of Medical Physics in Radiotherapy at the DKFZ. She has developed a model with which the effect of breathing during radiation on the tumor and the surrounding organs at risk can be investigated.
Caption:
Front from left to right: Nezha Suzanne Benabdallah, María Paula Roberti, Christina Stengl, Veronika von Messling (BMBF)
Back from left to right: Daniel Michaeli, Michael Hallek (Decade against Cancer Strategy Group, Director of Clinic I for Internal Medicine at the University Hospital of Cologne), Othman Al-Sawaf (winner of the PostDocs category, University Hospital of Aachen), Tilman Hölting
Photo: National Decade Against Cancer/Thilo Schoch