Photo credits: Proefdiervrij

Giulia Moreni Wins the 2024 Hugo van Poelgeest Award

“Animal-free, human-based innovation is not only possible; it’s essential for advancing personalized medicine and transforming lives” said Giulia Moreni, winner of the jury and audience award of the 2024 Hugo van Poelgeest Award. The prestigious prizes, which amounts up to €6,500, was awarded to Giulia by Proefdiervrij in recognition of her groundbreaking research and unwavering commitment to developing human-based, animal-free models. Through her work, Giulia is creating human organoid models using human stem cells, paving the way for new treatments for viral infections and personalized medicine.

The Hugo van Poelgeest Award

Named after Hugo van Poelgeest, the former chairman of the Dutch Association for the Protection of Animals, the renowned award is the oldest and most distinguished Dutch award for animal-friendly research life sciences. Since its inception in 2019, the award has been presented by Proefdiervrij, with the aim to highlight animal-friendly research and inspire the new generation of scientists to continue working with animal-friendly models. Participants of the award have a chance to win two prizes: the jury prize of €5,000 and the audience award of €1,500.

A call for more reliable human-based models

The theme for the award this year was Toekomstproof (or in English, future proof). The future in this context is a future where more human-based models are used, which will eventually lead to less animal testing.

Within OrganoVIR Labs, Giulia developed human-based 3D models, mainly the human airway epithelium (HAE) and human intestinal epithelium (HIE) to study Enterovirus (EVs) and Parechoviruses (Pevs) infections in humans. Through her research, she found that using human-based models to study human viruses delivers a higher predictive value compared to other models. Her innovation marks a key step towards creating more reliable, human-relevant alternatives. After all, 95% of antiviral tested in animals fail in humans.

Aside from her work in OrganoVIR Labs, Giulia has also been recognized as member of VEO (Viral Experts Organoids), participant and winning team of the Proefdiervrij Venture Challenge 2023. The Venture Challenge is a program where researchers commercialize their animal-free innovations. As a team, VEO is developing human respiratory tract, gut, and brain organoids to implement human organoids as the ideal animal-friendly alternative for preclinical antiviral drug screening.

A call for more reliable human-based models

‘I believe that a future without animal-testing is possible. Medical progress has allowed us to use more reliable human-based approaches that has also the advantage of saving animals’.

Watch Giulia’s pitch video here:

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