The grand prize for medical research rewards original, innovative research with an application to therapy. The 2010 prize winner, Clotilde Théry, works at the Institut Curie on research into the exosome complex, a sort of messenger between the immune system and cancerous cells. By studying their proteins in detail, her team discovered that lactadherin played a crucial role in the development of blood vessels. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, American researchers demonstrated that lactadherin lowered immune response. This finding raises the question of whether lactadherin can be inhibited to slow cancer development, particularly bladder cancer. Clotilde Théry is also attempting to discover whether vaccinations could be derived from the exosomes of tumours modified in the laboratory.