Klaus Grohe Prize goes to Yimon Aye

50,000 euros for groundbreaking research into cell communication

28-Jun-2024

Professor Dr. Yimon Aye, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, will be awarded the Klaus Grohe Prize 2024. The award, worth 50,000 euros, is one of the most highly endowed prizes for medicinal chemistry in Europe. It is awarded by the Klaus Grohe Foundation, which is part of the German Chemical Society (GDCh). Aye receives the prize for her groundbreaking research into cell communication and enzyme manipulation, with which she has advanced both basic research and practical applications in medicine . The award ceremony will take place on September 1st by GDCh President Professor Dr. Stefanie Dehnen as part of the International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC-ISMC 2024) in Rome, Italy.

With her research, Yimon Aye has significantly expanded our understanding of cellular processes and thus opened up new avenues for the development of more effective and targeted drugs. For example, she developed T-REX (Targetable Reactive Electrophiles and Oxidants), an innovative method for the targeted modification of proteins. T-REX can be used to observe specific chemical changes in proteins and study their effects on living cells. The method therefore helps to understand how certain chemical substances, so-called electrophiles, act in the cell and can influence diseases.

Aye's research results not only help us understand the causes of disease and signaling pathways, but also help us develop new and better drugs. For example, she discovered that the protein Akt3 can be inhibited by electrophiles. Inhibiting Akt3 has been difficult to date, but it is important for the development of drugs, especially in cancer research. Aye developed a new drug that specifically inhibits Akt3 and has already been successfully tested in mouse models.

Aye also studied the multiple sclerosis drug Tecfidera in more detail. She found that Tecfidera marks the protein Keap1, which can lead to cell death in some immune cells, while it leads to survival-promoting signals in other cells. These findings could help to improve the drug's effectiveness and reduce side effects in the future.

Yimon Aye, born in 1980 in Yangon, Myanmar, studied chemistry at the University of Oxford, UK. After completing her doctorate at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, she went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, in 2009 for a postdoc. From 2012, Aye taught and researched at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, until she moved to the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 2018. There she heads the Laboratory of Electrophiles And Genome Operation (LEAGO) as an associate professor. Aye has already received numerous awards for her research, including an ERC Consolidator Grant (2022). She is a member of a large number of advisory boards and committees and takes on editorial tasks in renowned journals. Among other things, Aye has been co-editor of ACS Chemical Biology since January 2022.

The Klaus Grohe Prize goes back to the chemist Professor Dr. Klaus Grohe (*1934), who developed important innovative drugs with great success during his professional career. In 2001, the couple Klaus and Eva Grohe set up the Klaus Grohe Foundation at the GDCh, which has awarded the Klaus Grohe Prize for medicinal chemistry to young scientists since 2004. Since a reorientation in 2020, the prize has been endowed with 50,000 euros and is now awarded to internationally renowned researchers in the field of drug development whose work makes an important contribution to application.

The German Chemical Society (GDCh) is one of the largest chemical science societies in the world, with around 30,000 members. The GDCh manages numerous dependent foundations in trust. The purpose of these foundations is to award prizes, sponsorship awards and scholarships. Foundation advisory boards decide on the awarding of prizes, sponsorship awards and scholarships.

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