Hot on the heels of yesterday’s announcement of the recipients of this year’s Lasker Awards, Nature Medicine is proud to present a special focus dedicated to the prize-winning accomplishments, written by the prize-winners themselves. (Click on the cover to the right to go straight there.)

Following a foreword by Joseph Goldstein, chair of the Lasker Awards jury, each of this year’s four awardees hark back to the respective discoveries that earned them the $250,000 prize, and place the historical findings in a modern context of translational medicine.

Douglas Coleman of the Jackson Laboratory offers “”https://www.nature.com/focus/Lasker/2010/pdf/Lasker2010-Coleman.pdf">a historical perspective on leptin"; Rockefeller University’s Jeffrey M. Friedman tells “”https://www.nature.com/focus/Lasker/2010/pdf/Lasker2010-Friedman.pdf">a tale of two hormones"; Napoleone Ferrara from Genentech describes how he went “”https://www.nature.com/focus/Lasker/2010/pdf/Lasker2010-Friedman.pdf">from basic science to therapy" with vascular endothelial growth factor; and Oxford’s David Weatherall descibes “”https://www.nature.com/focus/Lasker/2010/pdf/Lasker2010-Weatherall.pdf">the long road from the bedside through the laboratory to the community" with thalassemia medications.

And while we’re feeling nostalgic, be sure to check out our past Lasker specials from 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005.