Research Award

Marleen Bérouti, who completed her PhD at the Gene Center of LMU under the supervision of Veit Hornung, has been awarded the prestigious International Birnstiel Award for Doctoral Studies in Molecular Life Sciences.

In her doctoral research, Marleen Bérouti uncovered how specific endolysosomal nucleases cooperate to generate TLR7-agonistic ligands. She also discovered that pseudouridine—the most common RNA modification in humans—is neither efficiently processed nor recognized by TLR7 or TLR8. These findings provide a key explanation for why pseudouridine-modified mRNA vaccines can be safely administered without triggering unwanted immune responses, which has been crucial for their widespread use.

Alongside Marleen Bérouti, this year’s Birnstiel Award also honors Vojislav Gligorovski (EPFL), Jimmy Ly (MIT), Sarah Moser (Netherlands Cancer Institute), Shirsha Saha (IIT Kanpur), and Eric Sun (Stanford University).

The six laureates will be formally honoured at a ceremony in Vienna on 5 November 2025, where each will receive a certificate, a trophy, and a prize of 2,000 Euros. Nominations for the Birnstiel Award are open annually to all academic institutions worldwide, with the stipulation that only one candidate per institution or PhD program will be considered for an award. Calls for nominations are issued each May via the IMP website, social media, and a dedicated campaign. The awards are given as a joint initiative of the Max Birnstiel Foundation and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), where Max Birnstiel was the founding director.

IMP press release