Our postdoc Theresia Gutmann received the STS Science Award 2025 at the 28th Meeting on Signal Transduction in Weimar. This award recognizes outstanding research by postdocs or junior group leaders within the Signal Transduction Society (STS). With this award, the society recognized her excellent research in the field of signal transduction. Congratulations, Theresia! 🎉
Photo: Katharina Hieke-Kubatzky (STS President), Theresia Gutmann, and Klaudia Giehl (Justus Liebig University Gießen). ©Tina Hagedorn
She presented her work, “A moonlighting function of the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein in suppressing DNA-induced innate immunity”, at the meeting. Her research showed that the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein can directly inhibit cGAS by competing with DNA for binding. This mechanism helps explain how SARS-CoV-2 dampens early immune responses during infection.
At the meeting, Theresia also delivered the laudatory speech for Hao Wu (Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital), who received the STS Honorary Medal 2025 for her pioneering structural work on supramolecular assemblies in innate immune signaling, including the inflammasome and other supramolecular signaling complexes. Hao Wu was our guest in the Hyman lab at MPI-CBG earlier this year as a Vallee Visiting Professor and engaged intensively with the Dresden condensate community.
Theresia’s latest publication on this topic is available here: SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein directly prevents cGAS–DNA recognition through competitive binding PNAS (2025)
A link to a lay summary of the paper: Click Here
Photos: Impressions from the STS Honorary Medal Award Ceremony with Klaudia Giehl (Justus Liebig University Gießen), laudator Theresia Gutmann, Katharina Hieke-Kubatzky (STS President), STS Honorary Medal awardee Hao Wu (Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital), and Jonathan Lindquist (Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg). © Tina Hagedorn