Daniela Latorre receives Pfizer Prize 2020

The Pfizer Prize for Research, one of the most prestigious in the field of medical research in Switzerland, is awarded each by the Stiftung Pfizer Forschungspreis to nineteen young researchers who have distinguished themselves for their work in institutes or hospitals in the country.  

In the field of "Neuroscience and Nervous System Diseases" the award went to Dr. Daniela Latorre from the Sallusto Lab at ETH and Dr. med Ulf Kallweit, researcher at Witten/Herdecke University, both doing extensive study on narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder that affects one in 2000 people in the population. It depends on genetic and environmental factors and is caused by the loss in the brain of certain neurons that produce a neurotransmitter called hypocretin. The study of the two researchers found the existence in patients suffering from narcolepsy of T lymphocytes (cells of the immune system) that recognize hypocretin and that can directly or indirectly kill the neurons that produce it. This observation represents the first direct evidence that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease and opens new avenues for early diagnosis and treatment of this disease.

Daniela has also received the PRIMA support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, which enables her to start an independent career at the ETH Zurich and continue her research on the Guillain-Barré Syndrome with her team. Her studies have already brought her other awards in the past, such as the "Best publication in Basic Sleep Research" awarded by the Swiss Society for sleep Research, Sleep Medicin and Chronobiology in 2019 or the "Young Scientist Award" awarded the same year by the European Narcolepsy Network.

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