The 2025 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine was awarded on Tuesday to researcher Gilles Laurent for his pioneering work on the functioning of neurons. By combining comparative, evolutionary, functional and molecular neuroscience with computational theory, Gilles Laurent has shaped a modern understanding of the dynamics of neuronal populations, indicates the Louis-Jeantet Foundation. The Frenchman, who studied veterinary medicine, heads the department of neural systems at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany.
During his career, Gilles Laurent revealed mechanisms by studying the brains of insects, cephalopods, fish, reptiles and mammals. Thus, he addressed very diverse areas of neuroscience, ranging from network dynamics to oscillatory waves in the brain, including olfactory coding, the perception of visual textures, as well as sleep and the evolution of the brain.
Work on infections also rewarded
The Collen-Jeantet Prize for Translational Medicine 2025 goes to the German Veit Hornung of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Veit Hornung is being recognized for his research that shed light on how viral and bacterial infections are sensed by specific cellular receptors that activate immune responses. His discoveries pave the way for the development of vaccines and therapies against infectious and autoimmune diseases.
The research of Veit Hornung, who currently holds the chair of immuno-biomedicine at the Gene Center at the Ludwig Maximilian University, has important implications for cancer immunotherapy. This work has thus defined key aspects of the molecular basis of innate immunity.
-Ceremony in Geneva
The Louis-Jeantet Foundation endows each of the two prizes with a sum of 500,000 francs, of which 450,000 are intended to finance the continuation of the work of the winners and 50,000 are given to them personally. The awards ceremony will take place on Wednesday April 9 in Geneva.
The Louis-Jeantet Prizes are one of the best endowed distinctions in Europe. Each year, they reward cutting-edge researchers carrying out their activities in one of the member countries of the Council of Europe. Since their creation in 1986, the Louis-Jeantet Prizes have been awarded to 107 researchers, including 17 in Switzerland.
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