The first Rhine Main Universities (RMU) Award for Pharmaceutical Research & Innovative Medical Therapies, sponsored by the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines, will go to IBC2 scientist Cristian Prieto-Garcia from the Dikic group. The award recognizes his groundbreaking work uncovering how deregulated RNA splicing drives proteotoxicity, opening new therapeutic avenues.

Together with international collaborators, Cristian demonstrated that impaired spliceosome assembly triggers cryptic splicing, producing misfolded proteins that accumulate as proteotoxic aggregates, induce endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, and ultimately cause cell death. Importantly, his team showed that boosting the cell’s protein-clearance machinery – the ubiquitin-proteasome system and selective autophagy –  can mitigate these toxic effects. The findings, with direct relevance to spliceosome-associated diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, were published in Science.

The award ceremony will take place on 27 November 2025 at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, as part of the RMU‘s annual end-of-year celebration. On this occasion, Professor Christian Wiese from Goethe University will also receive the Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose RMU Award for the Humanities and Social Sciences. He is being recognized for his outstanding research on Jewish intellectual and cultural history as well as his exceptional commitment to science, education, and public engagement.

Congratulations to both laureates!

About the RMU Award
The RMU Award for Pharmaceutical Research & Innovative Medical Therapies recognizes outstanding contributions that advance fundamental understanding and translation in drug discovery, development, and therapeutic innovation across the Rhine-Main university alliance.