Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences | |
---|---|
Awarded for | Research aimed at curing intractable diseases and extending human life. |
Date | February 20, 2013 |
Reward | $3 million |
First awarded | 2013 |
Official website |
breakthroughprizeinlifesciences |
The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences is a monetary award, funded by internet entrepreneurs: Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan of Facebook; Sergey Brin of Google; entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner; and Anne Wojcicki, one of the founders of the genetics company 23andMe. The Chairman of the Board is Arthur D. Levinson of Apple.[1]
The award of $3 million, the largest award in the sciences,[2] is given to researchers who have made discoveries that extend human life. The Prize is awarded annually, beginning in 2013, with six awards given in each subsequent year. Winners are expected to give public lectures and form the committee to decide future winners.[1]
2013 winners
Eleven inaugural winners were announced in 2013. Each received $3,000,000.[1]
- Cornelia I. Bargmann (Rockefeller University), for the genetics of neural circuits and behavior, and synaptic guidepost molecules.
- David Botstein (Princeton University), for linkage mapping of Mendelian disease in humans using DNA polymorphisms.
- Lewis C. Cantley (Harvard Medical School, Weill Cornell Medical College),[3] for the discovery of PI 3-Kinase and its role in cancer metabolism.
- Hans Clevers (Hubrecht Institute), for describing the role of Wnt signaling in tissue stem cells and cancer.
- Titia de Lange (Rockefeller University),[4] for research on telomeres, illuminating how they protect chromosome ends and their role in genome instability in cancer.
- Napoleone Ferrara (University of California, San Diego), for discoveries in the mechanisms of angiogenesis that led to therapies for cancer and eye diseases.
- Eric S. Lander (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), for the discovery of general principles for identifying human disease genes, and enabling their application to medicine through the creation and analysis of genetic, physical and sequence maps of the human genome.
- Charles L. Sawyers (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center),[5] for cancer genes and targeted therapy.
- Robert A. Weinberg (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), for characterization of human cancer genes.
- Shinya Yamanaka (Kyoto University, J. David Gladstone Institutes, University of California, San Francisco), for induced pluripotent stem cells.
- Bert Vogelstein (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Johns Hopkins University), for cancer genomics and tumor suppressor genes.
2014 winners [6]
- James P. Allison (M. D. Anderson Cancer Center), for the discovery of T cell checkpoint blockade as effective cancer therapy.[7]
- Mahlon DeLong (Emory University), for defining the interlocking circuits in the brain that malfunction in Parkinson's disease. This scientific foundation underlies the circuit-based treatment of Parkinson's disease by deep brain stimulation.
- Michael N. Hall (Biozentrum University of Basel), for the discovery of Target of Rapamycin (TOR) and its role in cell growth control.
- Robert Langer (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), for discoveries leading to the development of controlled drug-release systems and new biomaterials.
- Richard P. Lifton (Yale University School of Medicine at Yale University), for the discovery of genes and biochemical mechanisms that cause hypertension.
- Alexander Varshavsky (California Institute of Technology), for discovering critical molecular determinants and biological functions of intracellular protein degradation.
2015 winners[8]
- Alim-Louis Benabid, Joseph Fourier University, for the discovery and pioneering work on the development of high-frequency deep brain stimulation (DBS), which has revolutionized the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
- C. David Allis, The Rockefeller University, for the discovery of covalent modifications of histone proteins and their critical roles in the regulation of gene expression and chromatin organization, advancing the understanding of diseases ranging from birth defects to cancer.
- Victor Ambros, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Gary Ruvkun, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, for the discovery of a new world of genetic regulation by microRNAs, a class of tiny RNA molecules that inhibit translation or destabilize complementary mRNA targets.
- Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, Helmholtz Center for Infection Research and Umeå University, for harnessing an ancient mechanism of bacterial immunity into a powerful and general technology for editing genomes, with wide-ranging implications across biology and medicine.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Rory Carroll (20 February 2013). "Breakthrough Prize announced by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 February 2013.
- ↑ The Economist. "Take it, Alfred" http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/02/science-prizes
- ↑ http://vivo.med.cornell.edu/display/cwid-lec2014
- ↑ http://newswire.rockefeller.edu/2013/02/20/cori-bargmann-titia-de-lange-win-inaugural-breakthrough-prizes-worth-3-million/
- ↑ http://www.hhmi.org/scientists/charles-l-sawyers
- ↑ Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences 2014
- ↑ Leach DR, Krummel MF, Allison JP.(1996) Enhancement of antitumor immunity by CTLA-4 blockade. Science 271(5256):1734–6.10.1126/science.271.5256.1734
- ↑
- ↑ $3 Million Prizes Will Go to Mathematicians, Too