Prisca Liberali awarded EMBO Gold Medal 2022

Prisca Liberali receives the award for her outstanding research that defined the mechanisms driving the formation of 3D intestinal organoids from stem cell cultures. In recent work, her group characterized the mechanisms that trigger symmetry-breaking during the formation of mouse intestinal organoids. Symmetry-breaking events are important steps in tissue formation as they allow the differentiation of initially identical cells into morphologically and functionally distinct cell types.

Her laboratory is also recognized for developing new powerful platforms and statistical approaches. These include a special type of microscope, which enables tracking of individual cells during intestinal organoid development over a timeframe of weeks, and an image-based screening test that has identified novel compounds improving intestinal regeneration in vivo.

EMBO awards its Gold Medal annually to scientists under the age of 40 for outstanding contributions to the life sciences in Europe. The award comes with a bursary of 10,000 euros.

Prisca Liberali earned a PhD at Mario Negri Sud Foundation in Italy. She then carried out postdoctoral research at ETH Zurich and Zurich University. In 2015, she started her own research group at the FMI in Basel and became an Assistant Professor at the University of Basel. In 2017, Prisca Liberali received one of the coveted Starting Grants from the European Research Council, she became an EMBO Young Investigator in 2019 and has been awarded the Friedrich Miescher Prize in 2020. In 2021, Liberali was appointed adjunct professor of systems cell biology at the University of Basel.