Every year the Louis-Jeantet Foundation awards a Prize to a maximum of three researchers who excelled at biomedical research in Europe. Previous winners stand out for their significant research contributions. Indeed, several were subsequently awarded a Nobel Prize. The work rewarded is often fundamental in nature but always entails significant medical applications. The philosophy of the prize is, in this sense, very close to the scope of this Journal. EMBO Molecular Medicine and the Louis-Jeantet Foundation have therefore decided to join forces in order to promote the work of the Prize winners.This year, The Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine recognizes Michel Haïssaguerre and Austin Smith. We are delighted to feature contributions by both in this issue (Haïssaguerre, 2009; Smith, 2009). The Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine is not intended to recognize past work but instead it aims to encourage outstanding ongoing research that promises to bring insights and possibly medical solutions to pertinent questions in the biomedical sphere. Both articles are an insightful read—the authors explain their work, the questions their fields are facing and how to address them. The description is so engaging that it is hard to avoid the urge to join work on the Purkinje tissue or the quest for the “ground state” human pluripotent stem cell.»This year, The Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine recognizes Michel Haïssaguerre and Austin Smith.«Michel Haïssaguerre, a cardiologist at the University Hospital of Bordeaux in France studies cardiac fibrillation. In his article, he describes how he started looking for the origins of atrial fibrillation, the most common cardiac arrhythmia affecting 5 million people in Europe. Unexpectedly, Haïssaguerre and colleagues found that often the source of the electrical impulses that assault the affected heart chamber (the auricle) lies in the pulmonary veins rather than in the auricle itself. This group is now tackling ventricular fibrillation, a lethal arrythmia responsible for 350 000 deaths/year in Europe alone. Their discoveries changed the management of patients suffering from these cardiac pathologies and also opened new fields in cellular and molecular cardiology. What characterizes the cells from which the fibrillating events arise? How and why does the electrical discharge happen? The genetic abnormalities linked to several syndromes associated with cardiac fibrillation and the most recent genome wide association studies identifying polymorphisms that affect cardiac conduction provide insights into the molecular aetiology of these diseases. This is an exciting area of molecular medicine and is of prime interest to the Journal.Austin Smith, now at Cambridge University, UK, knew he wanted to understand how embryonic stem (ES) cells regulate their self-renewal, pluripotency and differentiation from the moment he heard about Martin Evans, Matt Kaufman and Gail Martin's pioneering experiments. What started as a PhD side-project, has been the focus of his attention throughout his research career. While Smith's work is fundamental in nature, the medical possibilities for stem cell research are obviously immense and hotly pursued globally. Understanding in full the molecular intricacies of ES and induced pluripotent (iPS) cells may allow us to manipulate them for clinical use. By exposing the cells to the right molecular leads at the right time one can dictate their fate, e.g. to simply multiply or to generate insulin-producing beta cells. This is the promise of cell-based therapies and regenerative medicine and is one of the fastest-paced topics in molecular medicine at the moment. A note of caution is in order not to raise premature or unwarranted clinical expectations but this is definitely an area worth pursuing and one that EMBO Molecular Medicine is keen to feature.A key premise of the Journal is to bring the clinical and the molecular worlds closer together.This is amiably illustrated by this year's awardees: a clinician working to understand the physiological events behind particular cardiac disorders and a biochemist and geneticist whose fundamental work has vast clinical implications. Smith's bench work holds promise to impact on the bedside and Haïssaguerre's bedside studies brought up questions that only bench work can answer. Nevertheless, the space between bench and bedside all too often remains un-navigated. Indeed, while a key reason is the different research goals pursued by basic scientists and clinicians, another reason may still be found in cultural differences between MDs and PhDs—sometimes the ‘translation’ in translational research may have to be applied to language and approach in the first instance. Nevertheless, the gap is clearly narrowing in disciplines such as those recognized by the Louis-Jeantet jury this year and we look forward to an exciting era of applied biomedical research. EMBO Molecular Medicine will be here to publish these advances.