Brain Prize Frank Winkler Awarded World’s Largest Prize for Brain Research
30 May 2025
The neuroscientist and neurologist has received the Brain Prize 2025 from the Danish Lundbeck Foundation
Neuroscientist and neurologist Prof. Dr Frank Winkler has been awarded the world’s largest prize in the area of brain research − the Brain Prize 2025 granted by the Lundbeck Foundation. The award honors his research on the interaction of brain tumor cells and the nervous system, which laid the foundations for cancer neuroscience as a research field and provides starting points for new therapeutic strategies with glioblastomas – malignant brain tumors. Frank Winkler does his research at the Medical Faculty Heidelberg of Heidelberg University and at the German Cancer Research Center; he is active as a physician at Heidelberg University Hospital. The award is worth ten million Danish crowns (approximately 1.3 million euros) and goes in equal parts to the Heidelberg scientist and a colleague in the United States.
King Frederik X of Denmark presented the award at a ceremony in Copenhagen on 28 May 2025. He paid tribute to the research achievements of Prof. Winkler and Prof. Dr Michelle Monje, whose research as a neuroscientist and neurooncologist at Stanford University (USA) focuses on inoperable brain tumors in children. “Your achievements in cancer neuroscience are truly extraordinary. You are an inspiration not only to your peers, but to generations of scientists yet to come. Thanks to your tireless efforts, there is hope that one day all types of brain cancer can be cured.” The Brain Prize advertised by the Lundbeck Foundation is the largest research prize worldwide in the field of neurosciences and neuromedicine. It honors highly original and influential advances in all areas of brain research, from fundamental neuroscience to applied clinical research.
Frank Winkler’s research findings offer fundamentally new insights into the growth of so far incurable glioblastoma – extremely aggressive brain tumors. The tumor cells enter into contact with healthy nerve cells and receive signals from them; this fuels the invasive growth of the tumors. In addition, some tumor cells develop into “activators”, which, together with the excitation signals from the nerve cells, drive the formation of a tumor network like a fungal tangle in the brain. According to Prof. Winkler, the network enables the tumor cells to engage in complex communication and gives them enormous resistance to the usual therapies. The functional understanding of these cell-to-cell contacts is now opening up approaches to entirely new therapeutic strategies, which are currently being tested in clinical studies.
Frank Winkler studied human medicine in Hamburg, Freiburg, London (United Kingdom) and Cape Town (South Africa), earning his doctorate at the University of Freiburg. After a research stay in 2003/2004 at Harvard University (United States) he completed his habilitation in neurology in 2010 at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). In 2012 he accepted a professorship for neurooncology at Heidelberg University. Prof. Winkler is the Managing Senior Physician at the Department of Neurology of Heidelberg University Hospital and heads the Experimental Neurooncology Research Group, which belongs to the Clinical Cooperation Unit Neurooncology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. His research studies are also part of the Collaborative Research Centre “UNITE GLIOBLASTOMA – Understanding and Targeting Resistance in Glioblastoma”, which is coordinated at the Medical Faculty Heidelberg of Heidelberg University.