Ground-breaking migraine researchers win this year’s Brain Prize
We congratulate our trustee Professor Peter Goadsby on winning this prestigious award
We are delighted to congratulate our trustee Professor Peter Goadsby for winning this year’s Brain Prize. Professor Goadsby is one of four neuroscientists who won the prize for their discovery of a key mechanism that causes migraine which has led to ground-breaking new migraine treatments.
The announcement was made today by the Lundbeck Foundation, who grant the annual prize. The Brain Prize will be awarded at a ceremony in Copenhagen in October that will be presided over by His Royal Highness, The Crown Prince of Denmark.
Ground-breaking migraine research
This award is for four decades of research that paved the way for the development of an entirely new class of migraine drugs which are transforming the lives of many people with migraine. These are calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) monoclonal antibodies (MABs), which are the first preventive medicines specifically developed for the treatment of migraine.
Prior to their development, the only preventive medicine for migraine were drugs that had been have been developed for other conditions but which had found to be useful in treating migraine. Many of these treatments had very negative side effects that migraine patients often struggled with.
These new CGRP MABs are revolutionising migraine treatment as migraine patients gain access to them. Many are describing this new treatment as life-changing.
This work was undertaken by the four winners of this year’s Brain Prize:
- Professor Goadsby, Director of the NIHR-Wellcome Trust King’s clinical research facility at King’s College London, and Professor of neurology, University of California.
- Lars Edvinsson, Professor of internal medicine at Lund University, Sweden
- Michael Moskowitz, Professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
- Jes Olesen, Clinical Professor in the department of clinical neurology, Rigshospitalet, Denmark.
"We are privileged to have Peter as a trustee. I and everyone involved at the charity is delighted that his ground-breaking research and dedication to helping people with migraine has been recognised through this prestigious award. For far too long there has been a desperate need for research into new treatments that focussed primarily on migraine. Thanks to Professor Goadsby, Professor Edvinsson, Professor Moskowitz, and Professor Olesen, we are now hopeful that the development of new calcitonin gene-related peptide antibody drugs will change the lives of many people who live with this extremely painful and debilitating condition. That’s why it is critical that people who are eligible for this treatment are given access to it.”
