Medis Awards honour doctors for medical research
Ceremony at which the 10th Medis Awards were conferred. Photo: Rok Knafelj
Nine doctors and pharmacists from Central and Southeastern Europe, including Slovenia, were honoured for their outstanding research achievements as the International Medis Awards for Medical Research were presented for the 10th time in Ljubljana on 7 March.
Jure Urbančič of the Ljubljana University Medical Centre (UKC) won the award in the pulmonology and allergology field as the lead author of the paper Transcriptomic Differentiation of Phenotypes in Chronic Rhinosinusitis and Its Implications for Understanding the Underlying Mechanisms. The paper was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
The submitted research has "provided new insights into the molecular structure of chronic rhinosinusitis (inflammation of the nasal mucosa and sinuses), which is still a largely unknown field of genes and proteins that comprise pathways that may be targeted by future biologics," Urbančič said about his work.
The winners are selected among doctors and pharmacists from nine CEE countries who have published their medical research contributions in a specific medical field in a highly ranked scientific publication (impact factor higher than 1,500) and are daily actively involved in clinical practice in institutions throughout the region.
This year, 242 applications arrived from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia; 148 entries met all the criteria for nominations for the awards.
Apart from Urbančič, the other winners were David JM Bauer, Austria for gastroenterology, Gábor Szabó, Hungary for gynaecology, Nikola Bradić, Croatia, for intensive care medicine and anaesthesiology, Marija Babunovska, North Macedonia for neurology, Maja Živković, Serbia for ophthalmology, Gordana Bukara-Radujković, Bosnia and Herzegovina for paediatrics, Milena Anđelković, Serbia for pharmacy, and Irina Gessl, Austria for rheumatology.
The awards were founded in 2014 on the initiative of Medis, a Ljubljana medical marketing company, which remains their main sponsor.
Each winner receives a bronze sculpture by acclaimed Slovenian sculptor Jakov Brdar, a certificate, and a small financial grant.
The aim of the awards is to promote the innovative work of the winning doctors and pharmacists in public and to encourage them and others to continue their research work. In this way they contribute to important innovations in medicine and pharmacy and thus to more effective disease management, the organizers say.
