The medical geneticist who developed the first predictive test for Huntington’s disease was one of seven researchers recognized today by the Gairdner Foundation for his contributions to biomedicine. This year’s Gairdner awards — Canada’s equivalent to the Nobels or the Laskers, which come with a $100,000 cash prize for each recipient — also recognized leaders in the fields of epigenetics, immunology and infectious diseases.
In the late 1980s, the University of British Columbia’s Michael Hayden published a series of landmark papers showing that DNA markers linked to the gene responsible for Huntington’s disease, which had then not yet been identified, could be used as predictive tests for the devastating neurodegenerative disease. In subsequent years, Hayden, often described as the world’s most cited author on Huntington’s disease, discovered treatments that can block the onset of neurological symptoms characteristic of the disorder in mice. His team has also developed a number of screening tests and treatments for other rare genetic disorders, including Tangier disease and congenital insensitivity to pain.
“You look at a country and you ask who is leading — Michael Hayden is one of [those] people,” John Dirks, president and scientific director of the Toronto-based Gairdner Foundation, told Nature Medicine.
Just this month, Hayden was also a co-author on a paper published in Nature Medicine reporting that the mutant huntingtin protein interacts with the mitochondrial fission protein DRP1 to bring about neuronal damage characteristic of Huntington’s disease.
Other awardees announced today include the University of Edinburgh’s Adrian Bird and Hebrew University’s Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin for discovering the critical role of epigenetics in disease, and the University of Strasbourg’s Jules Hoffman and Osaka University’s Shizuo Akira for identifying a critical sensor of microbial infections. Also, Robert Black of Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health took home the Gairdner Global Health Prize for pioneering the use of zinc supplementation strategies for the prevention and treatment of diarrhea in the developing world.
The Gairdner prizes will formally be awarded in Toronto on 27 October.
Click here to read about last year’s winner, or look below the jump to watch a video interview with Hayden conducted just last month at the Sixth Annual Huntington’s Disease Therapeutics Conference in Palm Springs, California.
Image: University of British Columbia