15 Dec 2025
2025 EJI Ita Askonas Prize awarded by EFIS
Following the recommendation of the EFIS Gender & Diversity Task Force, EFIS is pleased to award Anna Christina Obenauf from the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna with the 2025 EJI Ita Askonas Prize.
About Anna Obenauf
Anna Obenauf studied molecular biology at the University of Graz and completed her PhD in molecular medicine at the Medical University of Graz. She was a postdoctoral researcher in Joan Massagué's lab at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from 2010, before establishing her own research group at the IMP in 2016. In 2022, she was promoted to the position of senior group leader at the IMP.
Anna Obenauf has received distinguished awards and honours. These include two ERC Grants (Starting 2018, Consolidator 2024); the AAAS Wachtel Cancer Research Award (2022); Swiss Bridge Award (2023); and most recently the Dr. Josef Steiner Cancer Research Award (2025).
Anna Obenauf was elected to the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2019); became an EMBO Young Investigator (2021); and is elected full EMBO member (2023).
On research in the Obenauf Lab
Anna Obenauf and her lab study how tumours evolve under therapeutic pressure and interact with the immune system. Obenauf’s research focuses on the dynamic interplay between cancer cells and the tumour microenvironment, particularly how targeted and immune-based treatments shape tumour evolution, drive resistance, and alter immune surveillance. Obenauf has shown that resistance mechanisms to targeted therapies often simultaneously foster immune evasion, thereby limiting the success of immunotherapies. Her lab’s discovery that MAPK-inhibitor resistance can directly induce resistance to immune-based treatments—by reprogramming cancer-cell signalling and the surrounding tumour microenvironment—provided crucial mechanistic insights that informed clinical decision making.
A central theme of her work is unravelling how effective anti-tumour immunity is generated or suppressed within tumours. In a 2025 publication in the journal Nature, scientists from the Obenauf lab systematically mapped immune-permissive and immune-evasive tumour microenvironments in experimental models and patient samples. They revealed that activated T cells must be locally restimulated by myeloid cells within inflammatory niches to achieve full effector function. Unexpectedly, the scientists identified inflammatory monocytes—previously underappreciated but abundant in tumours—as key contributors to this process. These cells can “cross-dress” by acquiring and presenting peptide–MHC class I complexes from tumour cells, enabling robust intratumoural T-cell activation. By dissecting the molecular and cellular hierarchies governing these interactions, her group outlined how cancer cells can sculpt immune-evasive environments and proposed rational combination strategies to restore immune control.
Beyond mechanistic discoveries, Obenauf’s lab develops innovative technologies to study tumour evolution. Notably, they created CaTCH, a CRISPRa-based lineage-tracing tool that enables the tracking and isolation of individual clones before and during therapy. Using this approach, her team demonstrated that resistance to targeted therapies frequently arises during treatment rather than from pre-existing resistant clones. Other lines of enquiry in the Obenauf lab include rare and understudied cancers such as Merkel Cell Carcinoma or paediatric osteosarcoma.
Dr. Obenauf's prize will first be recognized at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Austrian Society for Allergology and Immunology (ÖGAI) and then formally conferred during a dedicated awards ceremony at the Eighth European Congress of Immunology (ECI 2027) where she and 2026 and 2027 prize winners will be invited to present their research.
More information on the EJI Ita Askonas Prize is available here.
