Thomas Helleday awarded 2014 Eric K Fernströms Prize
Thomas Helleday, professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet, has been awarded the Erik K. Fernström Prize for younger medical researchers. He is being recognized for his discoveries of new targets for cancer therapy.
The overall aim of the Helleday laboratory is to improve the treatment of cancer by exploiting cancer defects in order to tailor specific drugs for all types of cancer, with minimal side-effects.
Earlier this year a team of researchers led by Professor Helleday identified a new way of treating cancer. The concept was presented in the journal Nature and is based on inhibiting a specific enzyme called MTH1, which cancer cells, unlike normal cells, require for survival. Without this enzyme, oxidized nucleotides are incorporated into DNA, resulting in lethal DNA double-strand breaks in cancer cells.
Thomas Helleday was also the first to scientifically demonstrate the concept called "synthetic lethality" for treating cancer. He proved that PARP inhibitors can selectively kill certain cancer cells without damaging surrounding healthy cells, which was a major breakthrough for the clinical treatment of mutated breast and ovarian cancers. Synthetic lethality can also be used to devise strategies to attack cancer. These PARP inhibitors are now being tested clinically all over the world, and several products are subjects to approval by the U.S Food and Drug Administration.
“Thomas Helleday’s determination has made him very successful in finding new targets for cancer therapy”, says Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren, Dean of Research and Chairman of the Award Committee. “Helleday’s research will have great importance for future strategies for treating different types of cancer.”
43 year old Thomas Helleday has established himself as an internationally recognized scientific leader within cancer research. By age 35 he was already installed as professor at three universities, Stockholm University, University of Sheffield and the University of Oxford. Since 2012 he holds the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg Professorship of Translational Medicine at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. In recognition of his research accomplishments Professor Helleday has been awarded numerous international awards, among them the Eppendorf-Nature Young European Investigator Award and the Göran Gustafsson Prize in Medicine awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The Eric K. Fernström Foundation was established in 1978 to promote medical scientific research. The primary objective of the Foundation is to award annual monetary prizes to researchers who have made important contributions to medical science. Eric Fernström was keen to encourage young researchers, and so every year the foundation awards a Nordic Prize and six additional Prizes to young scientists. Each of the country's medical faculties selects its own prize-winner. The Prizes will be awarded at a ceremony in Lund on 5 November. Thomas Helleday will also be honoured at Karolinska Institutet's installation ceremony in the Aula Medica auditorium on 17 October, 2014.
För further information, please contact:
Professor Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren, Dean of Research
Work: + 46 8-585 806 02
Email: hans-gustaf.ljunggren@ki.se
Karolinska Institutet is one of the world’s leading medical universities. It accounts for over 40 per cent of the medical academic research conducted in Sweden and offers the country’s broadest range of education in medicine and health sciences. Since 1901 the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has selected the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine.
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