Highly endowed Leenards Prize for antibiotics and dementia researcher
Published: Monday, Feb 26th 2024, 10:20
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On Monday, the Fondation Leenaards awarded two science prizes with a total value of almost 1.4 million francs to two research groups from French-speaking Switzerland. The first prize is dedicated to research into a new method for combating antibiotic resistance, the second to a research project on the early detection of dementia.
The first award-winning research group, led by Angela Koutsokera at the University Hospital of Vaud in Lausanne (Chuv), is investigating the use of so-called bacteriophages to combat bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics, as the Swiss foundation wrote in a press release.
Bacteriophages are viruses that are mainly found in wastewater, soil and excrement. They are harmless to humans, but destructive to bacteria that hunt them. According to the foundation, the challenge of this research is to find the right bacteriophage for the right antibiotic-resistant bacterium.
Second most common cause of dementia
The second award-winning research project, led by Gilles Allali from Chuv and the University of Lausanne, is dedicated to the early detection of Lewy body disease. This is the second most common cause of neurodegenerative dementia after Alzheimer's disease.
"It is estimated that around 20 percent of dementia patients are affected, which would correspond to around 40,000 people in Switzerland. In reality, these estimates are likely to be far higher, as this disease is little known and largely underdiagnosed," Allali was quoted as saying in the press release.
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