Elisa Oricchio wins 2024 Pezcoller Foundation-EACR Award
Elisa Oricchio. Credit: EPFL
Professor Elisa Oricchio at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences has been awarded the Pezcoller Foundation-EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award for 2024.
The European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) is a global membership community of people working in cancer research. Currently numbering more than 12,000 members worldwide, its stated mission is: “The advancement of cancer research for the public benefit: from basic research to prevention, treatment and care.”
The Pezcoller Foundation is a non-profit organization created in 1980 by Professor Alessio Pezcoller (1896-1993), Chief Surgeon at the Santa Chiara Hospital of Trento, Italy. The goal of the Foundation is to promote biomedical research in the field of cancer.
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.
This year, the Award has been won by Professor Elisa Oricchio, a cancer researcher at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences. Oricchio is the current Director of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC). Her lab systematically integrates genomic and functional analysis to identify oncogenic events in cancer and to use that information in order to design novel therapies.
Combining genomic analyses of patient samples with functional studies in cell lines and animal models, her research aims to design rational therapeutic strategies; for example, recently her group has begun uncovering the way genomic lesions influence the three-dimensional architecture of chromatin in cancer cells.
“The ultimate goal of every research project that we develop in the lab is to improve cancer patient care," says Oricchio. "Our research spans from the understanding of mechanisms regulating chromatin organization to the design and development of new therapies. I’m extremely grateful to the EACR and Pezcoller Foundation for this award which is not only a recognition of my work but foremost of all past and present members of my laboratory."