Celebration of The Brain Prize 2025
HM King Frederik of Denmark presented Professors Michelle Monje (USA) and Frank Winkler (Germany) with their Brain Prize medals at a ceremony in Copenhagen on 28 May. The two neuroscientists receive the prize for their seminal discoveries in brain cancer.
They have uncovered that the everyday activity that takes place in the brain drives the development of cancers within it. These findings open an entirely new way of thinking about and understanding brain cancers, and the potential strategies to treat them.
鈥淭he Brain Prize is a tremendous personal honour. It shines a light on this emerging new field of cancer neuroscience, and I am so hopeful that the Brain Prize will encourage more neuroscientists to study cancer, to join us in trying to understand the neuroscience of cancer. I think that this will be incredibly important for ultimately developing effective new neuroscience-inspired therapies for cancer patients鈥, said Prof. Michelle Monje during an interview at her home in California ahead of the ceremony.
Prof. Frank Winkler also commented on what the prize means for him: 鈥溾淲inning The Brain Price means for me that following the path of Cancer Neuroscience, trying to really understand these terrible diseases in a very different way and to develop new treatments from these discoveries, is the way to go.鈥
This year鈥檚 celebration took place in Copenhagen with 360 invited guests that counted representatives from the Danish and international neuroscience communities, the broader Danish life science and business sectors, the Danish ministries, foreign ambassadors, and, not least patron of the prize, HM The King of Denmark, Frederik X.
The Brain Prize is the world鈥檚 largest award for outstanding contributions to neuroscience, worth EUR 1.3 million.
It has been awarded every year since 2011 by the Lundbeck Foundation.
Read more about The Brain Prize
and watch the portrait film of the winners 2025
on .
The Lundbeck Foundation is an enterprise foundation encompassing a comprehensive range of enterprise and philanthropic activities 鈥 all united by its strong purpose; Bringing Discoveries to Lives. The Foundation is the long-term and engaged owner of several international healthcare companies 鈥 Lundbeck, Falck, ALK-Abello, Ferrosan Medical Devices, Ellab and WS Audiology 鈥 and an active investor in business, science and people through its commercial investments in the financial markets; in biotech companies based on Danish research and through philanthropic grants to science talents and programmes in Danish universities. By 2030, the Foundation aims to increase its average annual grants to at least DKK 1bn primarily focusing on the brain 鈥 including the world's largest brain research prize: .
