This year’s Athena Prize, the health care’s most prominent prize in clinical research, is awarded Professor Ola Winqvist and his research group at Karolinska Institutet.

Winqvist is Professor of cellular immunotherapy at Karolinska Institutet and a chief physician at Karolinska University Hospital. Ola Winqvist and his co-workers have developed a new principle for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. The methode is based on alleviating the inflammation by filtering out the active immune cells headed toward the inflammation core.

The jury’s motivation for giving the prize to Winqvist was: “A new and groundbreaking principle for custom-made treatment of inflammatory diseases that has been developed in close collaboration between academia, health care and industry. The method balances the active immune system by removing pro-inflammatory cells specifically aimed toward the bad tissue. A rolemodel for clinical research based on an innovative hypothesis and where the results can lead to improved treatment possibilties for large patient groups.”

The prize, which consists of a research scholarship of SEK 150 000 will be handed out during the Annual General Meeting for Physicians on December 5 in Stockholm. The Athena Prize is founded by Vinnova, the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, LIF, SwedenBIO, Swedish Medtech, the Swedish Research Council and the magazine Dagens Medicin.