Award Ceremony and Announcement of the Main Prize on 30 June 2026

The Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung warmly invites all interested parties to attend the public award ceremony. The finalists will present their award-winning research findings. Each of them will receive a personal prize of 5,000 EUR. The foundation will subsequently announce which of the three has won the main prize, which includes flexible research funding of 55,000 EUR for a particularly creative research idea. As a further highlight of the event, Professor Dr Kerstin Göpfrich will deliver a keynote lecture on her latest research in the field of synthetic biology. She is Professor of Molecular Biology at the Centre for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University (ZMBH). Host Desiree Hoving will guide the audience through the evening, which will be accompanied by the Kleiner, Meisenzahl & Höhn Jazzgroove Trio.

You may register here by 15 June to attend the event.

It will take place on Tuesday, 30 June 2026 from 5:30–8:00 pm and will be held in English. The venue is the Boehringer Ingelheim Campus in Ingelheim am Rhein.

The Finalists and Their Award-Winning Work

Taniya Chakraborty – RNA origami cytoskeletons for synthetic cells

Dr Taniya Chakraborty has been leading a junior research group at the Faculty of Biochemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacy of Goethe University Frankfurt since March 2025. She receives the finalist prize for her work in bottom-up synthetic biology. In her postdoc research, she used RNA origami – the controlled folding of RNA molecules with defined sequences – to generate structures that can serve as building blocks for an artificial cytoskeleton in synthetic cells. To achieve this, she introduced individual DNA molecules into membrane-enclosed lipid vesicles in a test tube, together with a minimal protein machinery for transcribing DNA into RNA. Depending on the DNA sequence, the RNA molecules formed straight or curved RNA origami filaments as well as ring-shaped structures while being transcribed. Her work demonstrates that RNA origami is a powerful technology for recreating complex cellular components – an important step towards a fully autonomous synthetic cell.

Original publication: Tran, M. P.*, Chakraborty, T.*, Poppleton, E., Monari, L., Illig, M., Giessler, F., Göpfrich, K. Genetic encoding and expression of RNA origami cytoskeletons in synthetic cells. Nature Nanotechnology 2025, 20: 664–671.

Josef Shin – B cell-driven nerve cell damage and its reversal in multiple sclerosis

Josef Shin, MD PhD, is a resident physician and neuroscientist at the Department of Neurology at the University Medical Center Mainz. His research focuses on how immune cells and nerve cells interact to understand how autoimmune diseases of the nervous system – such as multiple sclerosis (MS) – arise and can be treated. He discovered a direct link between the chronic activation of B lymphocytes – a hallmark of MS – and the damage to nerve cells. Chronically activated B cells release a signalling molecule called lymphotoxin-alpha (LTα), which triggers a chain of reactions that first disrupts the transmission of signals along nerve cells and ultimately leads to their death. When Josef Shin blocked this LTα-induced signalling cascade using a known inhibitor of the protein BTK, the nerve cells recovered. The BTK inhibitor used is already known to have beneficial effects on the clinical course of MS in patients. Josef Shin's work reveals a likely mechanism underlying this clinical effect and points to new therapeutic strategies to protect nerve cells and treat MS more effectively.

Original publication: Shin J*, Götz P*, Sharif N, Sola-Sevilla N, Grasmuck C, Schraad M, Pape K, Muthuraman M, Fleischer V, Zandee SE, Bittner S, Vogelaar CF, Prat A, Hanuscheck N, Zipp F. Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitors rescue neuronal impairment caused by B cell–mediated lymphotoxin-α release. Science Translational Medicine 2025, 17(822). doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adx2652.

Julian Wagner – Endothelial ZBTB16: a molecular shield against cardiac ageing 

Dr Julian Wagner is a biologist who has been leading a junior research group at the Institute for Cardiac Regeneration in the Faculty of Medicine at Goethe University Frankfurt since February 2024. In his work, he identified the protein ZBTB16 as a key regulator of cardiac ageing. ZBTB16 is found predominantly in the cardiac endothelium – the cells that line the walls of blood vessels and form an essential component of heart tissue. Julian Wagner observed that levels of ZBTB16 in these cells decline during ageing. He was able to show that this decline accelerates the ageing of the cardiac endothelium and gives rise to functional impairments of the heart that are typical of old age. Increasing the expression of ZBTB16 in aged mice prevented the progression of age-related processes. His findings suggest that ZBTB16 in the cardiac endothelium regulates the function of heart tissue through so-called paracrine signals between the endothelium and other cells of the heart. In doing so, he has uncovered a previously unknown mechanism of action that could open up new treatment approaches for age-related heart disease.

Original publication: Stilz KA, Leonard VE, Rodriguez Morales D, Glaser S, Larcher V, Ruz Jurado M, Malacarne PF, Manickam N, Tombor LS, Abplanalp WT, Panthel J, Kujundzic H, Fischer A, Schmitz K, Mueller OJ, Hille S, Kupatt C, Bozoglu T, Sami H, Ogris M, Procida-Kowalski T, Bartkuhn M, John D, Yekelchyk M, Schmachtel T, Rieger MA, Pham M, Krishnan JA, Guenther S, Brandes RP, Braun T, Zeiher AZ, Wagner JUG#, Dimmeler S#. Endothelial ZBTB16: a molecular shield against cardiac aging. European Heart Journal 2026, ehaf1063. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf1063.