CPR talent receives the Walter Schulz Foundation Research Prize 2018

On May 15 2019, postdoctoral researcher Fabian Coscia from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research (CPR), University of Copenhagen, was honored by the Walter Schulz Foundation at a prize ceremony in Munich. Fabian received the Research Prize 2018 as an acknowledgment of his exceptional finding of a new biomarker in ovarian cancer patients. The study was published in the renowned journal, Cell in September 2018.

Since 1995, the Walter Schulz Foundation awards each year a research prize for work on clinic-related cancer research. Fabian was presented the award, along 10,000 euros, for his work in elucidating the molecular cause between different survival patients with the highly aggressive ovarian cancer. 

“It is a great honor to have received this award, and it only furthers my motivation to do research for the benefit of society”, says award-receiver Fabian Coscia.

Together with research teams from the University of Chicago Medicine, the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and CPR, Fabian uncovered a biomarker in ovarian patients linked to longer survival.

“We used archived tissue from the University of Chicago cancer tissue bank and performed mass spectrometry to identify almost all the proteins in the samples. The results showed that the protein CT45 was elevated in patients with longer overall survival”, continues Fabian Coscia.

They also found that CT45 can induce a response from the immune system that help kill the cancer cells. The clinical implications from the study could be significant and CT45 may be particularly relevant to achieving long-term survival of ovarian cancer patients.



View Fabians scientific presentation in German.