Two researchers who uncovered the action of molecules known as chaperonins and the scientist who characterized the ancient Chinese herbal medicine artemisinin have won the 2011 Lasker Awards for basic and clinical medical research. And, in an unusual twist, an institution, rather than any single person, won the Lasker’s public service prize.

Yale University’s Arthur Horwich and the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry’s Franz-Ulrich Hartl took home the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for showing how protein complexes called chaperonins guide other proteins to assume their proper shape. Protein misfolding has since been linked to the accumulation of protein aggregates in many diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and biotech companies now take advantage of chaperonins to boost protein yields when producing biologic drugs. Horwich tells the “inside story” and Hartl describes the “path to discovery” in our annual Lasker special. (Click on the image to the right to go to a landing page with all of this year’s commentaries.)

This year’s Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award went to Tu Youyou of the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine — the first-ever Chinese recipient of the $250,000 award. Although Chinese herbalists had used the leaves of the Artemisia annua wormwood plant to treat many diseases for centuries, it was Youyou who, in 1972, derived the active ingredient artemisinin, which is now a staple of malaria therapy. In her commentary in Nature Medicine, Youyou describes her discovery and other “gifts from Chinese medicine”.

Rounding out the winners circle, the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center was recognized with the newly rebranded Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award, named in honor of New York major Michael Bloomberg, who himself won the public service award in 2009. Clinical Center director John Gallin discusses the hospital’s myriad contributions to clinical investigations and “the future of clinical research” in his commentary.