The InBev-Baillet Latour prize awarded to Frédéric Baron

Since 2006 the Inbev-Baillot Latour Fund has annually awarded a prize for clinical research work to two young Belgian researchers aged under 45, one francophone and one of Flemish origin.

This prize, with a value of 75,000 Euros rewards clinical research work carried out by doctors linked to a university institution. The winners are selected by a jury made up of the FRS-FNRS and the Flemish FWO.

This year the clinical research prize has been awarded to Dr Frédéric Baron, a FRS-FNRS Senior Research Associate, a researcher at the ULg's medullary grafting laboratory (GIGA Research, Hematology) and a doctor in Pr. Yves Beguin's Hematology Department at the Liège University Hospital Centre.

Photo © Marie-Noëlle Cruysmans

The prize was presented to him in Brussels on 22 April 2010 at a ceremony in the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Mathilde.

4 Liège award winners in as many years!

The jury stressed Frédéric Baron's pioneering work into the study of mini-grafts of hematopoietic stem cells to treat several haematological diseases. These mini-grafts prove to be very effective in the treatment of haematological tumours and certain renal tumours.

It should be stressed that it is the fourth consecutive year that the jury of the InBev-Baillet Latour prize for clinical research has honoured Liège doctor-researchers: Steven Laureys in 2007, Fatrizio Lancelotti in 2008 and Laurence de Leval in 2009.

Frédéric Baron became an ULg doctor of medicine in 1997 and a doctor of biomedical sciences in 2001. He has specialised in clinical hematology.

Frédéric Baron's work focuses on the study of non myeloablative grafts (which do not kill the bone marrow) or mini-grafts. Contrary to a classical bone marrow graft where the patient receives prior intensive chemioradiotherapy, this mini-graft requires less intensive prior treatment. The treatment with non myeloablative grafts focuses on the effects of the graft's reaction against the tumour, where the donor's immune cells present in the graft destroy the cancerous cells.

Frédéric Baron's study has enabled a better understanding of the therapeutic effects of mini-grafts on tumours and the reconstitution of the immune system after transplants. He has managed to show the importance of this therapy in treating various haematological diseases. Frédéric Baron is one of the key people and one of the main motors of this research area.

Website of the Inbev-Baillot Latour Fund