We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2023 Pezcoller Foundation-EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award is Prof. Dr. Nicola Aceto (ETH Zurich, Switzerland).

About the Award and Award Lecture

The Pezcoller Foundation-EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award celebrates academic excellence and achievements in the field of translational cancer research, which is defined as a fundamental research discovery that has the potential for future clinical development for the benefit of cancer patients. The award is presented annually to a researcher of excellence with no more than 15 years post-doctoral experience (or equivalent degree), with at least five years spent in Europe and presently employed in a European institution.

Prof. Dr. Aceto will give the prestigious Pezcoller Foundation – EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award Lecture at the EACR 2023 Congress ‘Innovative Cancer Science’ to be held in Torino, Italy from 12-15 June 2023. He will also be invited to give a lecture in Trento, Italy, at the Pezcoller Foundation, and will receive a €10,000 honorarium.  

The call for nomination for the 2024 Award will open in Autumn 2023.

About the 2023 Winner

Nicola Aceto is Professor of Molecular Oncology at the ETH Zurich, where he leads an international team of cancer researchers focused on answering questions that pertain to the metastatic process in various cancer types. Recent discoveries of the Aceto lab include important insights into the biological features and vulnerabilities of metastasis-forming circulating tumor cells, some of which already translated in clinical trials for patients with metastatic breast cancer. 

Prior to ETH Zurich, he has been Swiss National Science Foundation Assistant Professor of Oncology at the University of Basel. Earlier, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Haber lab at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, MA, USA, where he identified circulating tumor cell clusters as metastatic precursors. He has also been an active member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, MA, USA. He received a PhD summa cum laude from the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) in Basel, Switzerland with a thesis on protein tyrosine phosphatases and their role in breast cancer. 

Professor Aceto received several awards related to his work on circulating tumor cells, including the highly prestigious Swiss Science Prize Latsis for groundbreaking cancer research (2021) as well as the Friedrich Miescher Award for Outstanding Achievements in Biochemistry (2020). He is an inventor in several patent applications related to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and co-founder of an ETH spin-off company dedicated to developing new anticancer treatments.

About the Pezcoller Foundation

The Pezcoller Foundation is a non-profit institution, whose goal is to promote scientific research against diseases which afflict mankind, specifically the fight against cancer. The Founder, Prof. Alessio Pezcoller, was Chief Surgeon at Santa Chiara Hospital in Trento, Italy. The Foundation was established in 1980.

The Foundation depends primarily on the substantial sum of money bequeathed by Professor Alessio Pezcoller, and by significant contributions from its sponsors: the Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto Foundation, the Province of Trento, the Administrative Councils of Trento and of Rovereto and other occasional private donations.

Due to its ever increasing recognition within the international oncological community, the Foundation collaborates with some of the most important cancer institutions: the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR). The Pezcoller Awards are officially recognised during the international conferences of the two above mentioned associations.