Preisverleihung Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize for Clinician Scientist at Universität Heidelberg
4 June 2025
Most prestigious award for young researchers in Germany goes to PD Dr Dr Lukas Bunse
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has awarded this year’s Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize to PD Dr Dr Lukas Bunse. He was honored for his research on the development and clinical application of immunotherapeutic strategies for patients with high-grade gliomas. The prize, worth 200,000 euros, is Germany’s most important award for researchers in the early stages of their career. Lukas Bunse pursues his research at the Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University and at the German Cancer Research Center. In addition, he works as a physician in the Department of Neurology of Mannheim University Hospital.
During the prize-giving, Prof. Dr Esther von Stebut-Borschitz, director of the Department of Dermatology and Venerology at Cologne University Hospital, paid tribute Lukas Bunse’s research work. “He is a clinician scientist in the best sense,” she said, “who performs outstandingly both as a researcher and as a physician.” With his work, he gives hope, she added, not only through his exceptional scientific achievements at present − and yet to come − but especially in relation to people suffering from a certain type of brain tumor. DFG general secretary Dr Heide Ahrens presented the award.
Lukas Bunse’s research focuses on high-grade gliomas, which arise through mutations of brain cells or cells in the spinal cord, and are extremely difficult to treat. With his studies he wants to contribute to a better understanding of brain tumors and, by means of these insights, develop effective immunotherapies. Such therapies function by genetically engineering the body’s own immune cells to target tumor cells. Lukas Bunse’s research findings have “the potential to supplement or even replace the currently used therapies in future by a more sparing form of treatment. Furthermore, there is a prospect that these approaches may also be transferable to other brain tumors or different types of cancer,” the German Research Foundation notes in its tribute.
Lukas Bunse studied medicine at Heidelberg University and University College London (UK). His doctoral thesis deals with certain spontaneous immune responses from glioma patients. In 2020 he completed another doctoral thesis in biology. He is a clinician scientist at the Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University and also a senior neurologist. In addition, he leads an independent research team in the Clinical Cooperation Unit Neuroimmunology and Brain Tumor Immunology at the German Cancer Research Center. In 2018 he received the Ruprecht-Karls Prize and in 2019 the Hella Bühler Prize of Heidelberg University, worth 100,000 euros; in 2023 he was awarded the Novartis Prize for therapy-relevant immunological research from the German Society for Immunology.
The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize has been awarded annually since 1977. The prize money can be used over a period of up to three years for further research work. Lukas Bunse is one of the ten prize-winners in all – including four women scientists – for 2025. The award ceremony took place on 3 June 2025 in Berlin.