Six leading scientists to receive prestigious Novartis Prizes for Immunology at 16th International Congress of Immunology

• The Basic Immunology Prize is awarded to John Kappler, Philippa Marrack and Harald von Boehmer for demonstrating that the ability of the immune system to discriminate "self" from "non-self" is acquired in the thymus.
   
• The Clinical Immunology Prize is awarded to Zelig Eshhar, Carl June and Steven Rosenberg for their work on the cellular immune therapy of cancer using CAR-T-cells.

Basel, August 15, 2016 - Today Novartis announced that six scientists will receive the 2016 Novartis Prizes for Immunology at the upcoming 16^th International Congress of Immunology (ICI) in Melbourne, Australia on Aug 22, 2016.

The Novartis Prizes for Immunology are awarded every three years for breakthrough contributions to the fields of basic and clinical immunology. Each of the two Prize categories is endowed for CHF 100,000 and can be shared by up to three scientists.

"This year's prize recipients are scientific pioneers who have delivered novel concepts and opened the door to uncharted fields at the forefront of immunological research," said Dhavalkumar D. Patel, M.D., Ph.D, Head of Research Europe and Global Head, Autoimmunity, Transplantation and Inflammation research at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. "We are proud to sponsor these prizes as part of our continued commitment to supporting innovative research in immunology."

The winners were selected by an independent jury of seven world-class immunologists for their groundbreaking research into the biology of the immune system. Each recipient has had a tremendous impact on the understanding of T-cell mediated mechanisms such as tolerance (basic immunology) and how these principles can be exploited to design therapeutic approaches (clinical immunology).

The Novartis Prize for Basic Immunology 2016 is shared by John Kappler (National Jewish Health, USA), Philippa Marrack (National Jewish Health, USA) and Harald von Boehmer (Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, USA) for their work in demonstrating how the immune system is able to discriminate "self" from "non-self" through a process in the thymus based on positive and negative selection via T-cell receptor mediated recognition of peptide-MHC complexes.

The Novartis Prize for Clinical Immunology 2016 is awarded to Zelig Eshhar (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel), Carl June (University of Pennsylvania, USA) and Steven Rosenberg (National Institutes of Health, USA) for their work on the pre-clinical and clinical development as well as technological application of cellular immune therapy using Chimeric Antigen Receptor-T cells (CAR-T-cells) for diseases such as cancer.

"Immune disorders destroy the lives of many and increased research in this field is vital," said Hidde Ploegh, Jury chair, "these prestigious awards recognize the outstanding contributions made by the world's top scientists. It is so important that we recognize and reward these exceptional scientists who have paved the way for future research and treatment."

For more information on the prizes go to: http://www.novartisimmunologyprizes.com/

Disclaimer
This press release contains expressed or implied forward-looking statements, including statements that can be identified by terminology such as "to receive," "will," "upcoming," "opened the door," "commitment," or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of the Group regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such statements. These expectations could be affected by, among other things, risks and factors referred to in the Risk Factors section of Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update it in the future.

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