Anette-Gabriele Ziegler receives the EASD's Claude Bernard Prize

Prof. Anette-Gabriele Ziegler has received the 2026 Claude Bernard Prize, the most prestigious award of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD). The award recognizes her leadership and lifetime achievements in diabetes research, in particular her pioneering contributions to the early detection and prevention of type 1 diabetes (T1D).

The prize was presented during the 62nd EASD Annual Meeting, held this year in Milan, Italy. Prof Ziegler delivered the 58th Claude Bernard prize lecture on the 29^th of September, presenting clinical and translational achievements spanning her career. 

Prof Ziegler is a trained physician and clinical research scientist having studied in Germany and the USA. In 2010, she became Chair of Diabetes and Gestational Diabetes at the Technical University of Munich and founded the Institute of Diabetes Research at Helmholtz Munich, which she continues to direct today. Her research focuses on understanding the pathogenesis of T1D and translating this knowledge into strategies for prediction, early diagnosis and prevention.

Prof Ziegler has strong links to the Dresden diabetes research community. She is an Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the TUD and is the scientific lead of the Fr1da study, a large-scale program for the early detection T1D in children. In Saxony, Fr1da has been implemented since 2021 through a collaboration involving the PLID, the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, led locally by Prof. Ezio Bonifacio and Prof. Reinhard Berner. Dresden has since become one of three regional coordination centers for the program and hosts a second central Fr1da laboratory alongside that in Munich.

Through initiatives such as Fr1da, Prof Ziegler has helped move T1D clinical research forward by screening children to identifying the disease before symptoms appear thereby reducing the percentage of children who present with ketoacidosis at the onset of disease. The Claude Bernard Prize recognizes a career that has establish early detection as the gold standard for T1D care.