Dr. Simon Haas, whose research group is part of the joint research focus "Single Cell Approaches for Personalized Medicine" of BIH, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and MDC, receives the "GSCN 2022 Young Investigator Award" for his excellent research on the complex interplay between the immune system, blood stem cells, cancer cells and factors from the cellular environment.
The aim is to find causes for the development of cancer. To this end, Simon Haas and his research group are developing new single-cell and spatially resolved technologies. With his set of complex methods, Simon Haas has redefined the map of how blood cells arise from blood stem cells. In addition, Simon Haas' laboratory is developing highly accurate, personalized diagnostic and prognostic approaches based on single-cell technologies. These newly developed approaches will enable early disease detection and personalized treatment strategies with the long-term goal of therapeutically preventing cancers before their onset.
"I am very pleased about this award," says Simon Haas. "Because it confirms to us that our approach of investigating blood stem cells with Single Cell Technologies is target-oriented. In particular, it allows us to follow the exact pathway of how a healthy blood stem cell develops into a malignant cancer stem cell. With our translational approach, we hope to turn this knowledge into effective therapies."
Simon Haas studied Molecular Cell Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biosciences at Heidelberg University, Imperial College London and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). He received his PhD from DKFZ and Heidelberg University in 2016. Simon performed research at DKFZ, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard. In 2016 he became research group leader at HI-STEM and the DKFZ. As of 2020, Simon is an independent group leader at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), the Charité university medicine and the Berlin Institute of Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) at the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) in Berlin, Germany
The GSCN Award is endowed with 1500 euros. The other award winners are Meritxell Huch from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, who will receive the "GSCN 2022 Hilde Mangold Award," and the authors Adam C. O-Neill, Fatma Uzbas, Giulia Antognolli and Florencia Merino, and Magdalena Götz from Helmholtz Munich and Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU), who receive the "GSCN 2022 Publication of the Year Award" for their joint publication "Spatial centrosome proteome of human neural cells uncovers disease-relevant heterogeneity" in the journal Science.
The awards will be presented at this year's GSCN Annual Conference on October 15 in Münster, Germany. The award winners will give a lecture at the Presidential Symposium. Nobel Laureate Prof. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, Tokyo, Japan, will give a talk at the Presidential Symposium as a special presenter.
The GSCN has been networking stem cell researchers working in Germany nationally and internationally since 2013 and communicates their results and research to a broad public. The promotion of young scientists and the presentation of outstanding female scientists receive special attention at the GSCN with the "GSCN Hilde Mangold Award". Since 2021, the GSCN closely cooperates with the Berlin Institutes of Health (BIH) in the jointly founded "Dialogue Platform Stem Cell Research".