InSphero announces winners of HUMAIN Award 2025

Schlieren, Switzerland and Washington, D.C. — The Schlieren-based biotech company InSphero is presenting the HUMAIN Award for the second time this year, in collaboration with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The five winning teams are from Switzerland, Portugal, the United States, Spain, and Germany.

According to a press release, InSphero has presented the HUMAIN Award, established in collaboration with the Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, for the second time. The award recognizes researchers committed to improving access to human medicine and animal-free approaches in in vitro research, as well as promoting the faster introduction of these approaches.

The winners are representative of their research teams. One example is Cristina Müller, who works at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). She develops radiopharmaceuticals for cancer treatment using 3D models of human tumors. João Carlos Silva, from the University of Lisbon in Portugal, is developing a 3D in vitro model to study how menopausal hormones influence the onset and progression of osteoarthritis.

Francesca Duncan and Hannes Campo represent their research team from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Evanston, Illinois. The team is developing a human-based ovarian-liver co-culture model to study and reverse reproductive aging. Veronica Zingales works at the University of Valencia in Spain. She is developing a functional toxicity index to screen for human-relevant hepatotoxicity. Jin Feng is conducting research at the Helmholtz Center Munich and the Technical University of Munich on new GLP1-based therapies for diabetes using 3D models of human islet cells.

The winning teams will each receive $20,000 in vouchers for InSphero technologies and services. The teams will also spend a day at InSphero’s headquarters in Schlieren, where they can continue their research, receive advice from InSphero experts, and receive travel grants for presentations.

InSphero is a spin-off of the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, based at the Bio-Technopark Schlieren-Zurich.

(punkt4 Limmattal <limmatstadt@punkt4.info>)