日本のメディアは、なかなか全体を知らせてくれないので、米メディアの例を引いてみました。さらに各人のインタビュービデオがつきますが、ここではカットしました。
Leukemia, stem cell scientists, N.Y. mayor get Lasker Awards One of the most prestigious prizes in medicine is being awarded this year to scientists working on stem cells and leukemia — and to New York's mayor for his fight to cut tobacco use.
The Lasker Awards, which are announced today, have been given since 1945. They recognize the contributions of scientists, physicians and public servants internationally working to cure, treat and prevent disease.
"It's right up there with the Nobel Prize," says Gary Sieck, a research director at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. "The people who get it are at the top."
The Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award goes to three scientists whose turned a fatal cancer, myeloid leukemia, into a manageable condition with their discovery of the drug Gleevec (imatinib mesylate).
Brian Druker, 54, of Oregon Health & Science University,
Nicholas Lydon, 52, formerly of the Novartis pharmaceutical company, and
Charles Sawyers, 50, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center did the work in the 1990s. The drug inhibits the protein made by an abnormal gene that causes this form of leukemia. Further research was able to stop resistance to the drug in some patients.
When the first results of preliminary tests came in, in 1999, "almost everyone had some form of response, either a complete or partial remission. In a Phase 1 study you never see that," says Sawyers. "Now it seems like such a logical approach, but at the time it had never been done."
Being awarded the prize is "an incredible badge of respect and honor," he says.
The Lasker Basic Medical Research Award goes to
John Gurdon, 76, of Cambridge University and
Shinya Yamanaka, 47, of Kyoto University and San Francisco's Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. Their work has helped pave the way for the possibility of made-to-order stem cell treatments for individual patients.
Gurdon began working with frog eggs in the 1950s and was the first to successfully clone a frog, in the 1960s. This led directly to the cloning of mammals in the 1990s.
Yamanaka's ground-breaking announcement in 2006 that he had successfully reprogrammed a mouse skin cell to turn into stem cells holds promise for creating stem cells without destroying an embryo, up until now a major ethical and legal hurdle.
The Mary Woodard Lasker Public Service Award goes to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, 67, who waged an effective campaign to get people in his city to stop smoking and start eating better.
The Lasker Awards come with a prize of $250,000 in each category. They are sometimes called "America's Nobels," in part because 76 Lasker laureates have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize.
Updated 9/14/2009 12:58 PM USA TODAY By Elizabeth Weise
