Finnish researcher Sara Wickström has been awarded the Körber European Science Prize for discovering that cells sense physical forces, a finding that might open new possibilities for the treatment of cancer, organ fibrosis and other age-related diseases, the Körber Foundation said on Tuesday.
Wickström's research shows "how cells can 'feel' forces such as pressure and stretching and relay these signals all the way to their DNA," the foundation said in a statement.
"In doing so, physical forces can switch genes on or off, helping determine how cells behave and how tissues develop, age, or heal after injury."
Wickström discovered this previously unknown mechanism back in 2016. Until then, scientists had assumed that cells were controlled primarily by their genetic programme and chemical messengers.
Wickström, a medical doctor and cell biologist, is regarded as one of the pioneers in nuclear mechanobiology, which investigates the influence of physical forces on cells.
Wickström, 50, plans to use the €1 million ($1.1 million) in funding that comes with the price "to investigate how scarring in organs such as the skin, lungs and kidneys can be prevented or treated," the foundation said.
"Sara Wickström has changed the way we think about cells," Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Edvard Moser, chair of the Körber Prize Committee for the Life Sciences, was quoted as saying. "Her work revealed how physics and biology come together inside living tissues and laid the groundwork for future advances in medicine."
Wickström serves as the director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany, and research director at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Helsinki.
The Körber Prize has been awarded since 1985 for "scientific breakthroughs in the physical or life sciences in Europe." Previous recipients include eight Nobel laureates.
Wickström will be awarded the prize in Hamburg on September 18.
