Health

16 Sep 09

Professor Fiona Powrie is the first winner of the Ita Askonas Prize.

Professor Fiona Powrie of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology is the first winner of a new €10,000 European award for leading female immunologists, in recognition of the insights her research has provided into inflammatory bowel disease.

The Ita Askonas Prize has been established by the European Federation of Immunological Societies and the European Journal of Immunology to recognize outstanding female immunology researchers at an early stage of their career. Professor Powrie received the award at the European Congress of Immunology in Berlin.

‘To receive an award in the name of Ita Askonas is a great honour,’ says Professor Powrie. ‘She has been a huge contributor to immunology over many years and a great mentor for early-stage scientists.’ 

Professor Powrie’s work currently focuses on the interaction between intestinal bacteria and the immune system, and how this usually beneficial relationship breaks down in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

IBD is a chronic debilitating inflammatory condition of the intestine. Why it occurs is not known. Over the last 15 years, Professor Powrie and her laboratory have provided many new insights into immune regulation in the intestine and how this may break down in IBD. In particular, her findings on intestinal T cell responses has influenced the field and identified several new targets for treatment of the condition.

Fiona Powrie has recently been elected to the Sidney Truelove Chair of Gastroenterology at the University of Oxford. As part of this role, she will establish a new Academic Gastroenterology Unit to apply findings from model systems to the treatment of IBD.