Six leading scientists to receive prestigious Novartis Prizes for Immunology at 16th International Congress of Immunology

Novartis International AG / Six leading scientists to receive prestigious Novartis Prizes for Immunology at 16th International Congress of Immunology . Processed and transmitted by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

• The Basic Immunology Prize is awarded to John Kappler, Philippa Marrack and Harald von Boehmer for demonstrating that the ability of the immune system to discriminate "self" from "non-self" is acquired in the thymus.
   

The Clinical Immunology Prize is awarded to Zelig Eshhar, Carl June and Steven Rosenberg for their work on the cellular immune therapy of cancer using CAR-T-cells.

Basel, August 15, 2016 - Today Novartis announced that six scientists will receive the 2016 Novartis Prizes for Immunology at the upcoming 16^th International Congress of Immunology (ICI) in Melbourne, Australia on Aug 22, 2016.

The Novartis Prizes for Immunology are awarded every three years for breakthrough contributions to the fields of basic and clinical immunology. Each of the two Prize categories is endowed for CHF 100,000 and can be shared by up to three scientists.

"This year's prize recipients are scientific pioneers who have delivered novel concepts and opened the door to uncharted fields at the forefront of immunological research," said Dhavalkumar D. Patel, M.D., Ph.D, Head of Research Europe and Global Head, Autoimmunity, Transplantation and Inflammation research at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. "We are proud to sponsor these prizes as part of our continued commitment to supporting innovative research in immunology."

The winners were selected by an independent jury of seven world-class immunologists for their groundbreaking research into the biology of the immune system. Each recipient has had a tremendous impact on the understanding of T-cell mediated mechanisms such as tolerance (basic immunology) and how these principles can be exploited to design therapeutic approaches (clinical immunology).

The Novartis Prize for Basic Immunology 2016 is shared by John Kappler (National Jewish Health, USA), Philippa Marrack (National Jewish Health, USA) and Harald von Boehmer (Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, USA) for their work in demonstrating how the immune system is able to discriminate "self" from "non-self" through a process in the thymus based on positive and negative selection via T-cell receptor mediated recognition of peptide-MHC complexes.