The 2005 NCCR COME research grant goes to Dr. Harriet C. Thoeny, radiologist at the University Hospital Bern. The Advisory Board for the Advancement of Women selected her proposal from 9 sound applications. She will use the prize sum of CHF 20'000 to perform research in functional evaluation of transplanted kidneys by MRI.

Harriet C. Thoeny, a citizen of Liechtenstein, studied medicine at the Bern University. She started her career at the Radiology Department of the University Hospital Bern, where she became specialist in urogenital and head and neck radiology. During a 15-months research fellowship at the University Hospital of Leuven, Belgium she carried out experimental studies, focusing mainly on extracranial applications of Diffusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DW-MRI). DW-MRI allows instantly visualizing functional changes in biological tissues, e.g. when tumour tissue becomes necrotic after treatment. Harriet C. Thoeny applied this non-invasive method to head and neck radiology, nephrology/urology as well as oncological imaging. She discovered the challenge of performing prospective studies and returned to Switzerland with promising ideas.

Back home at the University Hospital Bern, Harriet C. Thoeny started a project on DW-MRI of the kidneys in healthy volunteers and in patients with transplanted kidneys. The challenge of her project is to detect renal graft rejection at early stages.