24-year-old Laura Hinze is awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Young Investigator Award 2022
Dr. Laura Hinze and her research group; Copyright: MHH / Karin Kaiser
25.01.2022
Dr Laura Hinze, a doctor and researcher at Hannover Medical School (MHH), will be awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Young Investigator Prize 2022 in March, the Paul Ehrlich Foundation Board announced today. The 24-year-old is now the youngest award winner in the foundation's history and is being honoured for her significant contribution to the understanding of signal transmission in cancer cells. "This is a great honour for Ms Hinze and a wonderful success for our promotion of young researchers," emphasises MHH President Professor Dr Michael Manns. For Dr Hinze, it is already the second major success within a few months: In December 2021, German Cancer Aid had accepted her into the Max Eder junior research group programme.
"I want to understand why leukaemia cells and other cancer cells do not respond to therapies, and to this end I am investigating the amino acid and protein degradation of cancer cells at the molecular level with my research group," explains Dr Laura Hinze, who works in the MHH Department of Paediatric Haematology and Oncology. She received the Young Investigator Award because she discovered how different pathways of signal transduction in cancer cells lead to resistance to the chemotherapeutic agent asparaginase. With this discovery, she and her research group have opened up new targets for the treatment of acute lymphatic leukaemia (ALL) as well as colorectal cancer.
The Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for Young Scientists, which was awarded for the first time in 2006, is presented once a year by the Paul Ehrlich Foundation to a young scientist working in Germany for outstanding achievements in biomedical research. The prize is endowed with 60,000 euros, the amount must be used for research-related purposes.
You can find the Foundation's press release here and background information on her research here.
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For more information, contact Dr Laura Hinze, hinze.laura@mh-hannover.de .
A video of MHH President Professor Dr Michael Manns visiting Dr Laura Hinze's lab and talking to her about her research can be found here.
The young doctor Dr Laura Hinze stands in her laboratory with her research group.