We are happy to announce our this year´s winner of the Werner Risau Prize: Dr. Alban Lonchamp, who is currently working as Resident in General Surgery in the Hopital du Valais in Sion, Switzerland. The work related to the project now considered for the Werner Risau Prize was mainly done in the labs of James D. Mitchell and Keith Okazaki at the Harvard University / Brigham and Women´s Hospital in Boston. In the abstract to this study it says"…Here, we report a nutrient-based pathway triggered by dietary restriction of sulfur amino acids, regulating angiogenesis independent of hypoxia or HIF1alpha in mice…" And further: …"Nutrio"-angiogenesis required the amino acid - sensing eIF2alpha kinase GCN2 and the transcription factor ATF4 in ECs. Increased ATF4 promoted expression of VEGF and the hydrogen sulfide (H2S) produced cystathionine-gamma-lyase (CGL). H2S triggered a metabolic switch to glycolysis via inhibition of mitochondrial respiration, thus facilitating rapid ATP production necessary for EC migration…" The discovery of this novel nutrient sensing pathway that appears even targetable by an appropriate diet independent of the hitherto known signaling pathways certainly deserves the acknowledgement given by the Werner Risau Prize. Congratulations!

Unfortunately, we could not find a person this year that would have qualified in our opinion as a laureate for the Werner-Risau-Prize . We are still looking into the potential reasons as to why this happened: Fewer people that actually knew Werner Risau personally and bear him in remembrance, low overall visibility of the prize, unpleasant format of the prize ceremony, not enough prestige (or money?) that is associated with the prize - all these points, if true or not, could have contributed to the fact that we had an extremely low number of applicants this year, although we had extended the deadline again for the application considerably. Nevertheless, instead of giving the prize to someone less outstanding, we decided against this option and convinced ourselves that we should do our best and spread the word about the Prize among our colleagues and collaborators and all the scientist that we will meet in seminars and conferences, with much more energy and vigor and enthusiasm as before during the next couple of months!

Please see the corresponding announcement in the download section!

He and his colleagues could also demonstrate that this differentiation process was independent from vessel neoformation or angiogenesis in the CNS and also independent from vascular patterning (the latter being the process of how vessel invade the CNS tissue and how the form branches there). Dr. Ben-Zvi currently is a Principle Investigator at the Department of Developmental Biology and Cancer Research at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Congratulations!!Tomorrow he will give a presentation on this topic at the DGZ Annual Meeting in Cologne!

Tags:endothelial, vascular cell biology, prize, angiogenesis

We are happy to announce our this year´s winner of the Werner Risau Prize: Dr. Aljali Kusumbe from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine at Münster, Germany. As in previous years we again had received really outstanding applications, of which Dr. Kusumbe´s study published in Nature made it to the top of the list. Why "Bones"? She discovered a specific blood vessel subtype in bone termed "type H", which is important for developmental and regenerative angiogenesis. These vessels seemed to be intrinsically linked to bone mass as loss of these vessels, which gradually occurs with age also leads to loss of bone bone mass. Reactivation of type H vessels in contrast increased osteoprogenitor cells numbers which are in close contact with the endothelial cells of type H vessels, and also improve bone mass.

Due to logistical problems, we again decided to extend the application deadline until January 31, 2012. We are sorry for any inconveniences that this might have caused and hope to get all potential applicants, which may have been discouraged by not being able to send their application in time, to submit their paperwork NOW! Good luck!

The dates for next International Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology and the Society for Developmental Biology are out: Reserve a few days from March 18 - 21, 2014 and get blown away again by a variety of fascinating topics in cell and developmental biology during the next meeting, which will be organized in Regensburg, Bavaria. Deadlines for abstract submissions and the program will be available soon at http://www.zellbiologie.de/de_tagungen.phtml. As soon as the Meeting poster will be made available, we will also provide a link to download it from this site.

Here is a link to the 2013 International Joint Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology and the Society for Developmental Biology in Heidelberg. It will be staged between March 20 - 23 and again cover a variety of fascinating topics related to current problems in cell and developmental biology. Abstract submission deadline for the meeting is January 31, 2013. But remember: The last chance to throw in YOUR contribution to the Werner Risau Prize will be on January 15, 2013. If you want to get the announcement poster for the DGZ meeting (i.e. to spread the word about this wonderful meeting in your institution) you can find the PDF on the download page.

Have a look at the photos from the 2012 award ceremony on the Photos page!

The competition is open again for the next WRP, which will be awarded as usual during the next 36th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology! The exact date and the location for 2013 have not been announced yet for this event but we will keep you posted. My guess is that it will take place again in March or April! As soon as this information will be released, you will also find it here on this website. So wrap up your stories and enter the combat zome! Apply for the Werner Risau Prize NOW! Admittedly, the deadline is still far away (January 15, 2013) but remember: Publishing may not be as straightforward as you might have assumed intially - and it can be a quite lenghty and cumbersome process!

We are happy to announce our this year´s winner of the Werner Risau Prize: Dr. Jorge Ivan Alvarez from the Neuroimmunology Unit at the Centre Hospitalier De L'Université de Montréal, Canada. Although we again had received quite a number of really outstanding applications of high quality, Jorge Alvarez´ study on the role of hedgehog signaling on the integrity of the blood brain barrier and its implications on immune quiescence in the CNS was so convincing that the prize committee hardly did not have any alternative but select him as the new awardee. He will be presenting in the late afternoon on March 21 during the 35th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology (March 21-25, 2012). Hope to see you all there!

Due to problems with the E-Mail address of Prof. Hallmann that was provided on The Prize - webpage, we decided to extend the application deadline until January 25th, 2012. We are sorry for any inconveniences that this might have caused and hope to get all potential applicants, which might have been discouraged by not being able to send their application, to submit their paperwork NOW! Good luck!

€ 4000.

The new Werner-Riisau-Prize will be awarded for the first time during the next meeting of the Swiss and German Societies for Cell Biology on March 25, 2009 in Konstanz, Germany. The increased prize money will certainly help to promote the popularity of the Werner-Risau-Prize and further raise its visibility and significance within the scientific community and especially amongst vascular biologists.