The 2025 “Lombardia è Ricerca” International Award goes to Caulfield and Easton

The Lombardy Region’s 2025 International “Lombardia è Ricerca” Award, dedicated this year to the theme “Innovative methods of early diagnosis or preventive medicine”, has been jointly awarded to British professors Mark Caulfield and Douglas F. Easton, pioneers in the field of genomic medicine.

As stated in the official citation, the award was granted to the two scientists for their “groundbreaking research that has led to the identification of genes associated with increased susceptibility to various diseases, particularly cancer and cardiovascular disease. This work has had a profound impact on early diagnosis, prevention, and precision medicine.”

The announcement was made by the President of the Lombardy Region, Attilio Fontana, and the Councillor for Universities, Research and Innovation, Alessandro Fermi, who welcomed the president of the jury, Maria Luisa Brandi, director of the Regional Centre for Rare Bone Diseases in Florence, to Palazzo Lombardia.

The €1 million ‘Lombardy Nobel Prize’ has been awarded by the Lombardy Region since 2017 to researchers who have made major contributions to the advancement of scientific knowledge in the areas covered by the prize, with the goal of improving citizens’ life expectancy and quality of life.

The award has a distinctive feature: 30% goes to the winners, while 70% of the sum is allocated to support a translational research project — aimed at applying fundamental scientific discoveries to the development of therapies and medical treatments for patients — which the winners carry out in collaboration with public and private research institutions in Lombardy.

Fontana: projects of exceptional quality

“It's an award,” said President Fontana, “that's becoming increasingly successful and clearly demonstrates our commitment to supporting researchers and scientists in their work. I believe that in Italy we must do more for them. This event, which certainly has a significant economic and communicative impact, goes precisely in that direction. It is a highly esteemed award, and once again this year the quality of the projects is outstanding.”

Fermi: we want our region to remain a beacon in the field of research

“This is now the third year I have had the pleasure of presenting the ‘Lombardia è Ricerca’ Award,” explained Councillor Fermi, “and for me it remains one of the most important events for my department. I believe that research and innovation are essential for a region like ours, and that awarding one million Euros to those who, with passion and dedication, devote themselves every day to discovering, innovating, and improving the world we live in is a gesture of both gratitude and foresight. This is also due to the impact that the Award can have on our region.”

“The new feature we decided to introduce this year,” he added, “is that candidates were required to submit a translational research project — developed in collaboration with one or more public or private research organisations in Lombardy — as a key component of their application, and therefore as an element to be evaluated by the Jury. The emphasis placed on this project further underscores how important it is for us that our region remains a beacon in the field of research.”

As noted by Professor Paolo Veronesi, president of the Umberto Veronesi ETS Foundation and director of the breast cancer programme at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO), “this year’s ‘Lombardia è Ricerca’ Award, presented to Professors Mark Caulfield and Douglas Easton, recognises two leading figures in international biomedical research whose studies have made a decisive contribution to the advancement of genomic medicine. Their research has identified numerous genes linked to a predisposition for complex diseases, particularly cancer and cardiovascular disease, opening up new prospects for early diagnosis and prevention. This award, presented on the day dedicated to the memory of my father, reaffirms the importance of supporting excellence in research, as the Veronesi Foundation has done for more than twenty years.”

The statement issued by the international jury

The winners were chosen from nominations submitted to an international jury made up of 15 leading scientists and the winner of the 2024 edition, Professor Alberto Mantovani (detailed profiles of the jury members are available on the award website webpage).

Below is the official statement from the jury:

“The 2025 ‘Lombardia è Ricerca’ International Award has been jointly awarded to Professors Mark Caulfield and Douglas Easton for their fundamental research in genomic medicine, which has led to the identification of genes associated with increased susceptibility to various diseases, particularly cancer and cardiovascular disease.

The award winners have been pioneers in translating genomic technologies, with significant impacts on early diagnosis, disease prevention, and precision medicine. The research projects to be carried out in the Lombardy Region will focus on cancer and autoimmune diseases, with particular implications for women’s health.

Professors Caulfield and Easton,” the statement continues, “are global leaders in the discovery and population-level application of genomic medicine for cardiovascular disease and cancer. They have designed and implemented genetic risk models that enable truly personalised preventive screening, with the aim of reducing disease incidence and mortality, improving quality of life, and lowering overall healthcare costs.”

The award ceremony on Research Day, 8 November, at La Scala

The award will be presented to the winners on the morning of 8 November at La Scala in Milan during Research Day in memory of Umberto Veronesi, promoted by the Lombardy Region in collaboration with the Veronesi ETS Foundation, to showcase the central role and achievements of scientific research and innovation to a wide audience.

The event, which is open to the public (including many schools) and free of charge, will be streamed live on the website of Corriere della Sera, the initiative’s media partner.

An event to promote Research and Innovation: the programme

As always, Research Day will open with an artistic performance, this year entrusted to the “king of flamenco,” Sergio Bernal, accompanied by Teatro alla Scala Orchestra musicians Laura Marzadori (first violin) and Luisa Prandina (first harp).

Following the institutional greetings and speeches by the President of the Veronesi Foundation, Paolo Veronesi, and Councillor Alessandro Fermi, the winners, Caulfield and Easton, will be interviewed on stage by Massimo Sideri, correspondent and columnist for Corriere della Sera.

TV presenter Gerry Scotti, a long-time supporter of research and a guest of the event since its first edition, will then present awards to the three winning teams of the 2025 edition of the Lombardy Region’s “Lombardia è Ricerca” prize for secondary schools, recognising their classroom innovations focused on health and prevention, or on supporting vulnerable people (more information can be found on the webpage student award).

The profiles of the winners

• Mark Caulfield

Professor Mark Caulfield (London, United Kingdom) is Deputy Principal for Health at Queen Mary University of London and Director of the NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research) Barts Biomedical Research Centre at the same university.

Caulfield has made remarkable progress in identifying genes that increase susceptibility to cardiovascular disease. He conceived the scientific strategy and led the creation of the “100,000 Genomes Project” for whole genome sequencing, involving more than 90,000 participants. The results of the project include the discovery of over 2,000 gene regions that influence blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, which are now used to predict the risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Some of these findings, following clinical trials, have transformed clinical practice, including international protocols for the primary prevention of hypertension and heart attack. The project successfully achieved its ambitious goal of bringing cutting-edge genomic technologies to the patient’s bedside.

Professor Caulfield’s philosophy has been to broaden access to clinical data and genome sequencing by creating a data centre that has enabled a coalition of over 3,400 international researchers from 33 countries to share access to the project’s datasets. His commitment and vision have had a transformative impact: with the integration of the “Genomic Medicine Service” into the UK’s National Health Service, the country now boasts the first free genomic analysis system for diagnosis and precision medicine. The “Genomic Analysis in Children Group and Generation Study” initiatives have led to a comprehensive neonatal screening programme using genomic sequencing for the early detection of potentially preventable conditions in children, aiming to reduce morbidity and mortality.

• Douglas Frederick Easton

Professor Douglas Frederick Easton (Cambridge, United Kingdom) is Director of the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Cambridge, where he also serves as Professor of Genetic Epidemiology.

He is a genetic epidemiologist who has made seminal contributions to understanding genetic susceptibility to cancer, with a particular focus on breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers. He has been a pioneer in studying cancer predisposition genes (including BRCA1 and BRCA2) and in developing statistical methods in genetic epidemiology.

He has coordinated international consortia that have conducted large-scale genetic studies to identify and characterise gene variants associated with cancer susceptibility risk; these multi-omic data are also valuable for identifying biomarkers for early cancer detection and potential therapeutic targets.

Easton and his collaborators have developed important and widely used predictive models of cancer risk, such as BOADICEA (Breast and Ovarian Analysis of Disease Incidence and Carrier Estimation Algorithm), a model for familial breast and ovarian cancer, two diseases with high mortality rates in women. The BOADICEA algorithm has received regulatory approval in both the EU and the UK, and is now used worldwide for genetic screening and risk management counselling.

His research on cancer-predisposing genes has deepened understanding of genetic susceptibility to cancer, informed early diagnosis strategies, and enhanced the effectiveness of preventive medicine.