Anna S. S. Gukovskaya, PhD, director of the pancreatic research group at UCLA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, has been named the 2025 recipient of the George E. Palade Prize, the highest honor from the International Association of Pancreatology (IAP).
The Palade Prize recognizes scientists whose work has significantly advanced the understanding of pancreatic biology and disease. Gukovskaya is being honored for her research on the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.
Her work, supported by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs since 1994, has revealed how injured cells called acinar cells trigger an inflammatory response that characterizes pancreatitis, how the dysfunction of organelles within acinar cells initiates and drives pancreatitis and much more. She currently runs a National Cancer Institute-funded program that investigates the role of autophagy in the link between a high-fat, high-calorie diet and KRAS-mutated pancreatic cancer.
Gukovaskaya, a scientist at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, is originally from Russia, where she earned a PhD in biochemistry from Moscow University and a Doctor of Science degree in cell biology from the Institute of Cytology at the USSR Academy of Sciences. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1992 to conduct pancreatitis research, first at UC San Diego and then at UCLA.
Over her career, she has published more than 160 scientific papers, reviews and book chapters, and has mentored seven PhD students, and more than 80 MD and PhD postdoctoral scholars, trainees and students from around the world.
As part of the award, Gukovskaya will deliver a lecture on organelle disorders in pancreatitis at the IAP’s Pancreas Summit 2025, taking place in Melbourne, Australia, this September.
