The Lasker Awards recognize major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of disease. This year, the Lasker Foundation honours the contributions of Victor Ambros, Gary Ruvkun, David Baulcombe, Akira Endo and Stanley Falkow. Read their freely available commentaries, written in celebration of the award, exclusively in Nature Medicine. Not only is the Lasker Foundation celebrating the contributions of these five scientists, it is also acknowledging the leadership and long-term advocacy of these prizes by Daniel Koshland and Michael DeBakey (both of whom are sadly now deceased), by naming two of the Lasker awards after them. For more information about these new tributes, the Lasker awards in general, and to access all the essays as separate PDFs or as a downloadable supplement, please visit the Nature Medicine website.