Europe's most prestigious award for medical research has been made to Dr Richard Treisman, director of Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute, for his discovery of a key control centre that may allow cancer cells to monitor and manipulate the healthy tissue that surrounds them.
The Louis-Jeantet Prize will give Dr Treisman a personal award of £46,000 and £250,000 for his laboratory. His research uncovered a molecular switch called the Serum Response Element, which acts like a telephone mast, receiving and unscrambling the complex web of signals that cancer cells use to communicate with their healthy counterparts. Tumours may be able to manipulate the control centres of healthy cells in order to change the behaviour of the surrounding tissue. Dr Treisman's work centres on the mechanisms involved in this process.
Untangling this communication system may allow scientists to develop strategies to counter the growth and spread of cancer and could lead to new types of anti-cancer drug.