The Ida de Pottère-Leupold and Dr. iur. Erik de Pottère Foundation was founded in 1960 by Dr. iur. Erik de Pottère to support cancer research at the University of Zurich. In 2019, the Comprehensive Cancer Center Zurich (CCCZ) conferred the first Ida de Pottère-Leupold und Dr. iur. Erik de Pottère Cancer Research Award. The biennal award recognizes doctoral students and early-career scientists and clinician-scientists of the Comprehensive Cancer Center Zurich, who have made a significant contribution to basic and/or clinical cancer research. The awards are endowed with CHF 5.000 each.
The 2021 Ida de Pottère-Leupold and Dr. iur. Erik de Pottère Cancer Research Award for doctoral students was conferred to Johanna Wagner, PhD, from the Department of Quantitative Biomedicine, UZH and ETH (at the time of the publication). The award recognizes her work: A single-cell atlas of the tumor and immune ecosystem of human breast cancer (Wagner et al., Cell 2019). Johanna Wagner characterized the diversity of several million cancer cells and immune cells in over one hundred human breast tumors and compared them with normal tissue. She discovered that against previous assumptions aggressive tumors were usually dominated by one cancer cell type that differed from patient to patient. “Our work in the Bodenmiller laboratory and with scientists at IBM Research Zurich and the Patients’ Tumor Bank of Hope Foundation has changed how we think about this complex disease and will hopefully improve patient selection for immunotherapy clinical trials” says Johanna Wagner. Since 2021, her postdoctoral research focuses on sarcomas at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg.
From left to right: Prof. Matthias Guckenberger, Dr. Tobias Weiss, Dr. Johanna Wagner, Prof. Holger Moch
The 2021 Ida de Pottère-Leupold and Dr. iur. Erik de Pottère Cancer Research Award for clinician-scientists was conferred to Tobias Weiss, MD/PhD, from Department of Neurology, USZ. The award recognizes his work: Immunocytokines are a promising immunotherapeutic approach against glioblastoma (Weiss et al., Science translational medicine, 2020). “Our preclinical characterization and first clinical translation of antibody-cytokine fusion proteins as a novel cancer immunotherapy against glioblastoma has laid the foundation for several follow-up projects and we hope to ultimately improve the prognosis of patients with this fatal disease” remarks Tobias Weiss. Since 2012, Tobias Weiss works as a physician and researcher at the Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich.
The 2021 award ceremony took place at the 2021 CCCZ Fellows Symposium on November 17th, 2021.
The Foundation
The Ida de Pottère-Leupold and Dr. iur. Erik de Pottère Foundation was founded in 1960 by Dr. iur. Erik de Pottère to support cancer research at the University of Zurich. The de Pottère Fund is managed by a board of trustees composed by the directors of the Comprehensive Cancer Center Zurich.
About the foundationCCCZ Fellow Program
The CCCZ Fellow Program supports outstanding post-doctoral fellows and clinician-scientists to carry out translational research projects in laboratories and clinical departments of the Comprehensive Cancer Center Zurich.
About CCCZ Fellow Program