Lasker Awards honor scientists for cancer research & Ebola efforts

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The Lasker Awards are one of the most respected prizes in the medical field, and this year, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation chose to honor individuals who have made a difference in the fields of cancer research, DNA research and Ebola response, the NY Times reports. The awarding ceremony for recipients will be held on Sept. 18 in Manhattan.

Among the recipients are Dr. Evelyn M. Witkin and Dr. Stephen J. Elledge, who both share the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for their separate work on "DNA-damage response," a set of actions that bacteria, yeast and human cells take in order to protect genomes against threats such as chemicals, radiations and malfunctioning biochemical processes.

Dr. Evelyn Witkin, a 94-year-old bacterial geneticist and professor emerita at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University, is responsible for discovering how ultraviolet light causes mutations in the bacteria E. coli in the 1960s. In the 1970s, she began to work with Miroslav Radman, from the Free University of Brussels.

Wikin said: "We pooled our information and decided that this was the tip of a very interesting iceberg. E. coli was inducing a large number of activities when the DNA was damaged."

Her coawardee, Elledge, is a 67-year-old professor of immunology, chair of the immunology department and executive director of the immunotherapy platform at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. His research involved genes and proteins and how it responds to damage, and the roles they play in cancer and other degenerative disorders of the nervous system.

Elledge said: "DNA damage is information. DNA has evolved the ability to sense its own integrity. This is inside a cell, like chemical intelligence."

NBC News reports that James Allison of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center was awarded the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. He was honored for "[cracking] open a brand-new therapeutic world" by finding out how a cancer patient's body can attack cancer. According to the foundation, his approach influenced how patients with advanced cases of skin cancer melanoma have increased their survival rate.

The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation also honors Doctors Without Borders with the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award "for bold leadership in responding to the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa and for sustained and effective frontline responses to health emergencies."

Doctors Without Borders (or Medecins Sans Frontieres) was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 "in recognition of the organization’s pioneering humanitarian work on several continents". The proceeds from the prize were used to build the Neglected Disease Fund, which according to MSF was "designed to support pilot projects for the clinical development, production, procurement and distribution of treatments for neglected diseases, such as Chagas, sleeping sickness and malaria."

The Lasker prizes include a $250,000 honorarium, and this year marks the 70th year of awarding by the organization.