In honor of the outstanding lifetime achievements of Else Kröner, the founder of the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung, the foundation has established this major biennial research prize to be awarded in a specified field of biomedical science. The field chosen for 2027 is “Cell-based immunotherapies”.
The prize amounts to EUR 2.5 million, of which EUR 500,000 shall be awarded personally to the recipient and EUR 2.0 million dedicated to the award-winner’s future research.
The candidates must be academic researchers in basic medical sciences or clinical sciences who have made outstanding scientific contributions to cell-based immunotherapies. Approaches pursuing ex vivo and in vivo engineering of immune cells for therapies addressing malignant and non-malignant diseases will be considered. The candidate’s work in the coming years is expected to yield further groundbreaking discoveries or advances. Nominations of younger and mid-career scientists are favored.
Candidate nomination: Candidates can be of any nationality and work in any country. They can be nominated by heads of research institutes or professional organizations. Self-nominations will not be accepted.
The deadline for nominations is August 27, 2026. A shortlist of nominees will be invited to submit a research proposal. The award ceremony will take place in Bad Homburg, Germany, on June 3, 2027.
Nominations can be submitted at the foundation’s application platform and should include the following information and enclosures:
- Complete contact details for the candidate and the nominator.
- A short statement giving the reason why the candidate is nominated (max. 400 characters).
- Nomination letter (max. two pages) describing the significant scientific discovery meriting the award and the candidate’s potential for continued outstanding productivity.
- Ten most important publications of the candidate. Please highlight those that are considered milestone papers with regard to the achievement the candidate is nominated for.
- Brief, two to three-page CV of the candidate.
Time frame and procedural flow
- Nomination deadline: August 27, 2026
- Selection of a candidate shortlist: September 2026
After formal prescreening of nominations by EKFS, an international award committee will invite a shortlist of candidates to submit a proposal, with a focus on the future experimental work intended. - Reviews of proposals: until December 2026
Submission of proposals. External expert reviewers will be requested to assess the merits of the candidates’ contribution to their specific field of research and to evaluate the scientific potential of future work. - Nomination of winner: January 2027
The jury shall propose the ultimate winner based on the reviewers’ assessments. This recommendation must be confirmed by the Foundation Board (“Stiftungsrat”). - Award ceremony: June 3, 2027
A festive award ceremony will be held in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Previous topics and winners
Previous winners of the prize have been Ruslan Medzhitov (2013, Immunology, Yale), Karl Deisseroth (2017, Biological Basis of Psychiatric Disorders, Stanford), Alessandro Aiuti (2020, Genome Editing and Gene Therapy, Milano), Akiko Iwasaki (2023, Diseases of Worldwide Significance, Yale), and Anastasia Khvorova (2025, RNA-based therapies, Massachusetts).
For further details, see here.
