Award for Bill and Melinda

The Lasker Award was given to Bill Gates and the creators of the hearing aid

Copper newsThe Lasker Prize, an annual prestigious award in the field of medicine, for 2013 was awarded to two researchers of communication of neurons in the brain, three creators of cochlear implants, as well as Bill and Melinda Gates for their charitable activities in the field of healthcare, according to a press release from the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation (2013 Lasker awards honor scientists for pioneering medical ).

The prize fund of the award is 250 thousand dollars.

The prize for basic scientific research will be awarded to Richard Scheller from the biotechnology company Genentech and Thomas Sudhoff from Stanford University for the discovery of the molecular mechanisms behind the process of rapid release of neurotransmitters (nerve impulse transmitters) into the intersynaptic space. This process underlies all communications between the nerve cells of the brain. The studies of Scheller and Sudhoff, in the late 1980s, independently identified key proteins that regulate the process, helped to uncover the genetic basis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease.

The Prize for clinical Research will be awarded to Graeme Clark, Ingeborg Hochmair and Blake Wilson for their work in the field of hearing restoration of deaf people. In the 1970s, Hochmayr and Clark, who worked at the Austrian company MED-EL, engaged in the development of cochlear implants, and the University of Melbourne (Australia), were the first to apply the method of inserting electrodes into the cochlea of the inner ear to stimulate auditory nerves in response to changes in sound frequency. Wilson, now working at Duke University (North Carolina, USA), later improved this method, thanks to which the implantable hearing aid began to more efficiently convert acoustic information into electrical impulses entering the brain.

Bill and Melinda Gates were awarded the Lasker Prize for "historically significant change of views on the world's most difficult health problems and improving the quality of life of millions of the most disadvantaged people on the planet," according to a press release. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has allocated more than $26 billion to various health programs and research, primarily to vaccinate hundreds of millions of children in developing countries against deadly infectious diseases.

The awards ceremony will take place in New York on September 20.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru11.09.2013