Medical doctor and cell biologist Sara Wickström has been awarded the Körber European Science Prize for research that overtuned a long-held view of how cells work. In doing so, she has founded an entirely new field of research.
Sara Wickström receives the €1 million Körber European Science Prize, which has been awarded since 1985 for major scientific breakthroughs in Europe.
Wickström has shown how cells sense the physical forces of the world around them. Cells can feel pressure and stretching, for example, and relay these signals to the cell nucleus, where the DNA is located. There, signals from these physical forces can switch genes on or off.
Before Wickström’s discoveries, many researchers believed cells were controlled mainly by their genes and by chemical signals from neighbouring cells. Her findings show that the physical environment also shapes how tissues develop, age, and heal after injury.
“I remember thinking: if this is true, then it’s something really, really new,” says Sara Wickström, Research Director at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Helsinki.
