Lasker Award – 2019
The awarding ceremony of the next Lasker Prize winners will be held on September 20
Marina Astvatsaturyan, Echo of Moscow
Since 1945, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation has been honoring scientists and doctors who have made significant contributions to fundamental biology, clinical research and improving public health. The Lasker Prize, which amounts to $250,000 in each of the three categories, often precedes the larger and most significant scientific award: 88 Lasker Prize laureates have already won the Nobel Prize.
This year, the Lasker Prize recognizes the achievements of modern immunology. The names of the new laureates were announced last week.
The award in the category of basic research (Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award) will be received by Max Cooper (Max D. Cooper) from Emory University School of Medicine and Jacques Miller from The University of London, which independently, but complementing each other's work, experimenting on mice and chickens, identified two special classes of lymphocytes, B and T cells, providing a strict immune response.
In the nomination for clinical research, the winners of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award were Michael Shepard, Axel Ullrich and Dennis J. Slamon. Shepard and Ulrich, while working at Genentech, and Slamon at the University of California, Los Angeles, created Herceptin, the world's first monoclonal antibody cancer therapy.
Monoclonal antibodies are B–cell-producing proteins that bind to specific abnormal cells, including cancer cells. In the case of herceptin, the antibody binds to a specific protein (HER2) on the surface of breast cancer cells.
The award in the field of public health – its exact name is the Lasker-Bloomberg Award for Public Service (Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award) – was awarded to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, GAVI.
Its creation in 2000 was initiated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Currently, thanks to GAVI, more than 760 million children have been vaccinated, more than 13 million lives have been saved in 73 countries, the New York Times writes. To increase the availability of vaccines, the alliance trains health care workers, seeks storage opportunities for heat-sensitive vaccines in settlements where there is no electricity, and conducts educational work.
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