In Montalcino, on Saturday, September 19, the Casato Prime Donne Award honours Sandra Misale—a 41-year-old woman born in Calabria who now heads a laboratory bearing her name at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. If patients suffering from pancreatic or colon cancer, melanoma, or leukaemia can today hope for a more effective and less invasive treatment, they owe it in part to her.

The jury of the Casato Prime Donne Award—chaired by Donatella Cinelli Colombini and comprising Rosy Bindi, Anselma Dell’Olio, Anna Pesenti, Stefania Rossini, Anna Scafuri, and Daniela Viglione—selected Francesca Ciancio and Andrea Cuomo as the winners in the journalism categories for promoting Montalcino and its wines. Other awards went to nine young talents in the fields of music, art, jewellery making, and pastry arts.

SANDRA MISALE: PRIMA DONNA 2026

The 2026 theme of the Casato Prime Donne Award—”The Dream Is/and Reality”—comes to life in the story of Sandra Misale. Originally from Palmi on the Calabrian coast, she earned a degree in molecular biotechnology in Turin and subsequently worked at some of the world’s leading cancer research centres, including Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She is currently at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she runs a laboratory bearing her name: the Misale Lab.…

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THE WORK OF ART THAT ACCOMPANIES THE QUOTE BY THE PRIMA DONNA 2025, DARYA MAJIDI, IS BY A 17-YEAR-OLD STUDENT FROM THE SIENA ART HIGH SCHOOL, GIULIA LAPENTA

by Donatella Cinelli Colombini, winedestination, Fattoria del Colle Trequanda 

Ciclo infinito-Endless Cycle is an artistic installation approximately 3.5 meters high with a cylindrical, saw-cut travertine base with a split top. From this base emerge six silhouettes depicting human heads made of 14 mm diameter solid round iron, hand-painted with a silver, gold, and copper metallic effect. The irons rise to form faces and then descend to sink into the ground. The work was created by COIMA under the direction of architect Elisa Boldi.

CICLO INFINITO ENDLESS CIRCLE BY GIULIA LAPENTA

Young artist Giulia Lapenta developed the 2025 theme of the Casato Prime Donne Award, which concerns Artificial Intelligence, sending a message of alarm and the hope of a cycle that begins and ends on our planet’s surface.

The art installation is conceived of five elements: the earth, the base, the iron rods connecting the base to the heads, and the heads and tails.  Earth is the starting point, and from the earth emerges the base, which, with its cylindrical shape, symbolizes human evolution and the invention of the wheel. The heads represent AI and the attempt to recreate human intelligence, but the metal wires with which they are made of descend to the ground, indicating that artificial intelligence exists within a perpetual cycle.…

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