With their Starting Grants, the SNSF supports outstanding young researchers in Switzerland and enables them to lead a research project with their own team. Grantees at the pre-professorial stage of their careers will receive an appointment as assistant professor, if they haven’t already this position.

The SNSF Starting Grants are a transition measure launched by the SNSF on behalf of the federal government because Switzerland is still considered a non-associated third country in the European research programme Horizon Europe, and researchers in Switzerland are not eligible to apply to the ERC Starting Grant.

In 2023, the SNSF selected a total of 67 projects, two of which to the DBM Basel. The scientists will be supported by the SNSF with CHF 1.7 to 1.8 million over a period of five years.

• Dr. Jean-Christophe Beltra aspires to improve immunotherapies in cancer treatment. To this end, he wants to uncover new strategies for rejuvenating exhausted T cells. After completing his undergraduate studies in France and obtaining his doctorate in immunology in Canada, he is currently conducting his postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania. He will start his project at the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel in January 2024.

• Dr. Karen Dixon joined the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel to start her independent research in 2022. Trained as an immunologist in Ireland and the Netherlands she moved to the US to conduct her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute. Her group investigates the interaction of nerve and immune cells in the tumor microenvironment. In her SNSF Starting Grant project she focuses on ways to exploit the neuronal vulnerabilities of solid tumors. The findings should open up new possibilities for cancer therapy.