Christina Morgenstern Receives the 2026 ENT Science Award
Yesterday, at the 2026 Annual Congress of the Austrian ENT Society in Salzburg, Christina Morgenstern from the Vienna Airway Lab was awarded the ENT Science Award. The award recognizes her study on chronic rhinosinusitis, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
What is the study about?
Around one in ten people develops chronic rhinosinusitis at some point in their lives, often with nasal polyps. The condition varies widely from person to person: some people have only mild symptoms, while others suffer greatly, for example those with an intolerance to pain medications such as aspirin, which is linked to asthma and nasal polyps.
To treat patients in a more targeted way in the future, doctors need a better understanding of what is happening in the body behind the different forms of the disease. To this end, Christina Morgenstern and her team analyzed nasal secretions and blood from 80 people. Using modern laboratory methods and computer-assisted data analysis, they searched for proteins that are characteristic of the individual forms of the disease.
They identified distinct patterns and discovered two promising markers for nasal polyps: one in nasal secretions and one in the blood. In the long term, such markers could help to diagnose the disease more precisely and to tailor treatment more closely to each individual.
A Heartfelt Thank You
Work like this can only succeed as a team effort. We thank all colleagues who contributed to the study, our collaborators for their outstanding support, and all patients whose participation made this research possible.
Dear Christina, congratulations from all of us. We are delighted for you!
Publication: Morgenstern C, et al. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2026;157(1):190-202. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2025.08.025
