Miriam Merad, Mount Sinai, USA, has studied how cells in the immune system affect the body’s ability to fight tumours. Her discoveries have hugely contributed to making these cells a promising target for the development of new cancer therapies. She is now awarded the Sjöberg Prize, worth one million US dollars.
When we get cancer, our immune system can sometimes help us fight the disease. One way it does this is by using T cells from the adaptive immune system to attack the tumour. However, myeloid cells, including macrophages, which are part of our innate immune system, are also found around the tumour.
Miriam Merad started to study these cells over 20 years ago, making a fundamental discovery. She demonstrated that not all macrophages originate from cells in the surrounding blood system. Instead, some of them arise early in an embryo’s development. She then investigated the role of myeloid cells in the microenvironment around various types of cancer tumours.
Normally, macrophages function as the body’s cleaners, for example removing dead bacteria and cells from our tissues.
“However, in cancer, the tumour often exploits the macrophages to make the T cells less alert. This reduces the T cells’ ability to attack the tumour, which increases the potential for it to grow,” explains Urban Lendahl, secretary of the Sjöberg Prize Committee.
In recent years, Miriam Merad has made more advances and published new data from studies that include lung cancer in mice and humans. In some of these, she blocked signals from macrophages, so the T cells were more alert and better able to attack the tumour. In the best-case scenario, this may stop the tumour from growing or reduce its size. Thanks to the prize money from the Sjöberg Foundation, she will now have even greater opportunities to continue her research.
“I’m honoured to receive this prestigious award, which I am hoping can support our recent effort to modulate inflammatory myeloid cells that accumulate in older patients and contribute to cancer progression. Prevention research is very difficult to fund, so this prize is especially timely for us." she says.
The Sjöberg Prize Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is very optimistic about what she will be able to achieve in the future.
“Miriam Merad is a pioneer in the rapidly growing field of cancer immunotherapy. Her research on myeloid cells is a breakthrough, one which has great potential as a foundation for the development of new cancer therapies,” says Thomas Perlmann, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and chair of the Sjöberg Prize Committee.
FACTS Laureate:
Miriam Merad, is a professor of cancer immunology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA. She is Director of the Precision Immunology Institute, and Director of the Marc & Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute. Born in Paris in 1969 but grew up in Algeria. Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the University of Algiers 1992. Moved to Paris, France, and then to Stanford University, California, USA, where she obtained her PhD 2001, in collaboration with Université Paris Diderot.
Miriam Merad, Professor of cancer immunology
Prize citation:
“for discoveries identifying the origin of myeloid cell subtypes and elucidating how they modulate antitumour immunity.”
Contacts
Experts on the Sjöberg Prize Committee
Urban Lendahl, Professor of Genetics, Karolinska Institutet
urban.lendahl@ki.se
+46-70-844 65 12
Beatrice Melin, Professor of Oncology at Umeå University and Senior Consultant at Norrlands University Hospital
Beatrice.melin@umu.se
+46-73-091 80 28
Press Contact
Eva Nevelius, Press Secretary at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
eva.nevelius@kva.se
+46-70-878 67 63
Do you want to know more? Take a look at the Sjöberg Prize Video
You can also find photos of the Laureate possible to download at www.kva.se
FACTS The Sjöberg Prize
The prize is awarded in partnership between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Sjöberg Foundation. The Foundation also provides the funding. The prize was established using a donation from businessman Bengt Sjöberg, who died from cancer in 2017. It is to be awarded to a person or persons who have made decisive contributions to cancer research, and amounts to 100,000 US dollars as a personal prize and 900,000 US dollars as funding for continued research. The Sjöberg Prize 2025 will be presented at the Academy’s Annual Meeting on 31 March. The Sjöberg Prize Lecture will be held the same day at Karolinska Institutet.
Read more about the Sjöberg Prize