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Two researchers who discovered a hormone intimately linked to obesity and a scientist who found a protein associated to a common form of blindness have won this year\u2019s Lasker awards \u2014 the $250,000 prizes that often hint at future Nobel Prize recipients.<\/p>\n
Jackson Laboratory\u2019s Douglas Coleman<\/a> and Rockefeller University\u2019s Jeffrey Friedman<\/a> took home the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for co-discovering that the hormone leptin helps regulate appetite and body weight. In the 1970s, Coleman first showed that mice have some sort of appetite-suppressing substance in the blood, which Friedman later identified and called leptin, in 1994. (For a review by Friedman into therapeutic avenues of obesity research, click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n This year\u2019s Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award was awarded to Genentech molecular biologist Napoleone Ferrara<\/a>, who discovered how to block the protein VEGF<\/span> inhibitors to prevent vision loss in people suffering from wet macular degeneration. Roche-Genentech now markets a drug called Lucentis, which has been the focus on some controversy<\/a>. (For a review by Ferrara into the VEGF<\/span> receptors, click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n David Weatherall<\/a>, a retired medical geneticist from the University of Oxford, was also honored with the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science for 50 years of \u201cinternational statesmanship in biomedical science,\u201d including discoveries into the genetic blood disorder thalassemia.<\/p>\n To find out why the Lasker Awards are a lot like papal portraiture, check out this commentary<\/a> written last year by the chair of the Lasker Awards Jury, Joseph Goldstein.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two researchers who discovered a hormone intimately linked to obesity and a scientist who found a protein associated to a common form of blindness have won this year\u2019s Lasker awards \u2014 the $250,000 prizes that often hint at future Nobel Prize recipients. Jackson Laboratory\u2019s Douglas Coleman and Rockefeller University\u2019s Jeffrey Friedman took home the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for co-discovering that the hormone leptin helps regulate appetite and body weight. In the 1970s, Coleman first showed that mice have some sort of appetite-suppressing substance in the blood, which Friedman later identified and called leptin, in 1994. (For a … Read more<\/a> Continue reading