Created in 2002, the Grand Prize will be given each year to a scientist or clinician who has made important contributions to cardiovascular physiology, biology, or medicine. Taken in the widest sense, these fields also include reconstructive surgery and the replacement of damaged tissues, physiology, pharmacoly and therapeutic approaches, epidemiology and genetics, cell behaviour, molecular mechanisms and regeneration, gene and cell therapies, development and congenital malformations.

Scientific Grand Prize of an amount of 600,000 euros.

It will be awarded in 2021 under the following conditions:

DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF DOSSIERS: JANUARY 11, 2021
DATE OF AWARD DECISION: APRIL 12, 2021#

CONSTITUTION OF THE DOSSIER:

• A nominating proposal by a distinguished scientist using the official form
  (downloadable on the website: http://www.institut-de-france.fr)
• A curriculum vitae (1 page)
• A description of the scientific achievements of the candidate focusing especially on those contributions that deserve the Grand Prize (2 pages maximum)
• A list of 10 major publications
• Additional documents will not be taken into consideration

Please note:

1. The Institut de France requires that the dossier be presented in English.
2. A candidacy can only be accepted if:

• The official nominating form, established by a distinguished scientist, has been duly completed
• All required documents for establishing a dossier are included

3. A candidacy that was not selected in the previous years can be resubmitted provided that the project is updated.
4. Members of the Institut de France are not eligible.
Download the nomination form

---

• 2002: Pr Salvador Moncada MAE, professor of experimental and therapeutic biology at the Royal College of London and director of the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research.

• 2003: Pr Robert J. Lefkowitz of the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina (United States) for his very important discoveries in the field of the family of transmembrane helix receptors.

• 2004: Pr Attilio Maseri of the « Vita e Salute » University at the San Raffaele Hospital of Milano in Italy for his work, in particular that in clinical research into the importance of vasomotor phenomena in the various manifestations of angina pectoris.

• 2005: Pr Harold F. Dvorak (Harvard Medical School – Boston MA – United States), Napoleone Ferrara (Genentech – San Francisco CA – United States) and Moses Judah Folkman (Children’s Hospital – Boston MA – United States) for their research work allowing the identification, cloning and initial clinical applications of VEGF (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor).

• 2006: Pr Philipp Bonhoeffer, director of the cardiac catherisation laboratory at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, and Pr Francis Fontan, honorary professor of cardiac surgery at the University of Bordeaux II, for their research work in the cardiovascular field.

• 2007: Pr Christine and Jonathan Seidman of the Medicine and Genetics Department of the Harvard Medical School of Boston, for their research resulting in the discovery of the genes involved in certain acquired or congenital heart diseases.

• 2008: Pr Dario DiFrancesco MAE of the Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Department (Molecular Physiology and Neurobiology Laboratory) of the University of Milano for his research work resulting in the discovery of ion channels involved in the regulation of heart rhythm.

• 2009: Pr Eric Olson, head of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Texas South Western Medical Center University in Dallas, for his work on the mechanisms of action of the regulatory genes responsible for heart development, opening up new therapeutics possibilities in the fight against heart disease.

• 2010: Pr Michel Haïssaguerre, director of the Department of Cardiac Arrhythmia at the University Hospital of Bordeaux, for his revolutionary discoveries in the field of cardiac arrhythmias and more particularly his work into the causes and treatment of atrial and ventricular fibrillations.

• 2011: Pr Valentin Fuster, director of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York for his work on atherothrombosis and the role of platelets in the blockage of the arteries.

• 2012: Pr William G. Kaelin (Howard Hughes Medical Institute – United States), Peter J. Ratcliffe (department of Medicine at the University of Oxford – United Kingdom) and Gregg L. Semenza (the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine – Baltimore – United States) for the discoveries of the mechanisms that control the response of cells, tissues and whole organisms to changes in the levels of oxygen.

• 2013: Pr Garret A. FitzGerald, chair of the department of pharmacology and director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania, and Carlo Patrono MAE, chair of the department of pharmacology at the Catholic University School of Medicine in Rome, for their research work on the role of low dose aspirin for the prevention of myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular accidents.

• 2014: Pr Adolfo J. de Bold, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa (Canada), for his ground-breaking discovery of the cardiac hormone atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) and of its effects on the blood pressure and the blood volume.

• 2015: Dr. Albert Starr, director of Knight Cardiovascular Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, for his ground-breaking implantation of the first successful artificial heart valve and which contributed since to improve the treatment of the cardiac valvulopathies.
• 2016: Pr Elisabetta Dejana MAE (FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology Foundation, Milan), and Elisabeth Tournier-Lasserve (UFR Médecine Paris Diderot) for their breakthrough discoveries on brain blood vessel development and disease.

• 2017: Pr Alain Cribier, CHU Charles Nicolle (Rouen), for his research work which led at performed the first in-human implantation of an aortic valve using cardiac catheterization.

• 2018: Pr Catherine Boileau (Hôpital Bichat AP-HP, Université Paris Diderot, Paris), Helen Hobbs (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, United States) and Nabil Seidah (Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, Canada), for their research having led to the identification of PCSK9, a major regulator of cholesterol metabolism.

• 2019: Pr Peter J. Schwartz (Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan) and Pedro Brugada (Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel, Belgium), for their research in the field of heart arrhythmias that lead to sudden cardiac death.

• 2020 : Not awarded due to COVID 19.