Wolf Prize in Medicine
Encyclopedia
The Wolf Prize in Medicine is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation
in Israel
. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture
, Chemistry
, Mathematics
, Physics
and Arts
. The Prize is probably the third most prestigious award in medicine
, after the Nobel Prize
and the Lasker Award
.
Wolf Foundation
The Wolf Foundation is a private not-for-profit organization in Israel established in 1975 by Dr. Ricardo Wolf, a German-born Jewish Cuban inventor and former Cuban ambassador to Israel.- Ricardo Wolf :...
in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture
Wolf Prize in Agriculture
The Wolf Prize in Agriculture is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and the Arts...
, Chemistry
Wolf Prize in Chemistry
The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and Arts.-Laureates:...
, Mathematics
Wolf Prize in Mathematics
The Wolf Prize in Mathematics is awarded almost annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics and Arts...
, Physics
Wolf Prize in Physics
The Wolf Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine and Arts. The Prize is often considered the most prestigious...
and Arts
Wolf Prize in Arts
The Wolf Prize in Arts is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation, and has been awarded since 1981; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine and Physics, awarded since 1978...
. The Prize is probably the third most prestigious award in medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, after the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
and the Lasker Award
Lasker Award
The Lasker Awards have been awarded annually since 1946 to living persons who have made major contributions to medical science or who have performed public service on behalf of medicine. They are administered by the Lasker Foundation, founded by advertising pioneer Albert Lasker and his wife Mary...
.
Laureates
| Year | Name | Nationality | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | George D. Snell | for discovery of H-2 antigens, which codes for major transplantation antigens and the onset of the immune response. | |
| Jean Dausset Jean Dausset Jean-Baptiste-Gabriel-Joachim Dausset was a French immunologist born in Toulouse, France. He married Rose Mayoral in 1963, with whom he had two children, Henri and Irène... |
for discovering the HL-A system, the major histocompatibility complex in man and its primordial role in organ transplantation. | ||
| Jon J. van Rood Jon J. van Rood -Awards:In 1978, van Rood was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine, jointly with George D. Snell and Jean Dausset, "for his contribution to the understanding of the complexity of the HL-A system in man and its implications in transplantation and in disease."... |
for his contribution to the understanding of the complexity of the HL-A system in man and its implications in transplantation and in disease. | ||
| 1979 | Roger Wolcott Sperry Roger Wolcott Sperry Roger Wolcott Sperry was a neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate who, together with David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel, won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work with split-brain research.... |
for his studies on the functional differentiation of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. | |
| Arvid Carlsson Arvid Carlsson Arvid Carlsson is a Swedish scientist who is best known for his work with the neurotransmitter dopamine and its effects in Parkinson's disease... |
for his work which established the role of dopamine as a neurotransmitter. | ||
| Oleh Hornykiewicz Oleh Hornykiewicz -Biography:Hornykiewicz was born in 1926 in Sykhiw, then in Poland . In 1951, he received his M.D. degree from the University of Vienna and joined the faculty of his alma mater the same year and has worked there ever since. He also served for twenty years as chairman of the Institute of Biochemical... |
for opening a new approach in the control of Parkinson's disease by L-Dopa. | ||
| 1980 | Cesar Milstein César Milstein César Milstein FRS was an Argentine biochemist in the field of antibody research. Milstein shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 with Niels K. Jerne and Georges Köhler.-Biography:... Leo Sachs Leo Sachs Leo Sachs is a German-born Israeli molecular biologist and cancer researcher. Born in Leipzig, he Emigrated to England in 1933, and to Israel in 1952... James L. Gowans |
/ ; ; |
for their contributions to knowledge of the function and disfunction of the body cells through their studies on the immunological role of the lymphocytes, the development of specific antibodies and the elucidation of mechanisms governing the control and differentiation of normal and cancer cells. |
| 1981 | Barbara McClintock Barbara McClintock Barbara McClintock , the 1983 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, was an American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927, where she was a leader in the development of maize cytogenetics... |
for her imaginative and important contributions to our understanding of chromosome structure behaviour and function, and for her identification and description of transposable genetic (mobile) elements. | |
| Stanley N. Cohen | for his concepts underlying genetic engineering; for constructing a biologically functional hybrid plasmid, and for achieving actual expression of a foreign gene implanted in E. coli by the recombinant DNA method. | ||
| 1982 | Jean-Pierre Changeux Jean-Pierre Changeux Jean-Pierre Changeux is a French neuroscientist known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins , to the early development of the nervous system up to cognitive functions... |
for the isolation, purification and characterization of the acetylcholine receptor. | |
| Solomon H. Snyder Solomon H. Snyder Solomon H. Snyder is an American neuroscientist.Snyder attended Georgetown University 1955-1958 and received his MD from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1962. After medical internship at the Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, he served as a research associate 1963-1965 at the NIH,... |
for the development of the ways to label neurotransmitter receptors which provide tools to describe their properties. | ||
| James W. Black James W. Black Sir James Whyte Black, OM, FRS, FRSE, FRCP was a Scottish doctor and pharmacologist. He spent his career both as researcher and as an academic at several universities. Black established the physiology department at the University of Glasgow, where he became interested in the effects of adrenaline... |
for developing agents which block beta adrenergic and histamine receptors. | ||
| 1983/4 | No award | ||
| 1984/5 | Donald F. Steiner Donald F. Steiner Donald F. Steiner is an American biochemist and a professor at the University of Chicago.- Birth and education :Donald F. Steiner was born in 1930 in the United States. He completed his B.S. in Chemistry and Zoology from the University of Cincinnati in 1952. He completed his M.S. in Biochemistry... |
for his discoveries concerning the bio-synthesis and processing of insulin which have had profound implications for basic biology and clinical medicine. | |
| 1986 | Osamu Hayaishi Osamu Hayaishi is a Japanese biologist and a professor at Osaka Bioscience Institute.- Birth and education :Osamu Hayaishi was born in Stockton, California, U.S.A, in 1920. He completed his M.D. from Osaka University in 1942.- Academic career :... |
for his discovery of the oxygenase enzymes and elucidation of their structure and biological importance. | |
| 1987 | Pedro Cuatrecasas Pedro Cuatrecasas Pedro Cuatrecasas is an American biochemist and an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology & Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.- Birth and education :... Meir Wilchek Meir Wilchek Meir Wilchek is an Israeli biochemist.He is a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science.-Early life and education:Meir Wilchek was born in Warsaw, Poland, scion of a rabbinical family... |
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for the invention and development of affinity chromatography Affinity chromatography Affinity chromatography is a method of separating biochemical mixtures and based on a highly specific interaction such as that between antigen and antibody, enzyme and substrate, or receptor and ligand.-Uses:Affinity chromatography can be used to:... and its applications to biomedical sciences. |
| 1988 | Henri G. Hers Henri G. Hers Henri-Géry Hers is a Belgian physiologist and biochemist, and was a professor at the Universite Catholique de Louvain. Hers' suffers from an inborn glycogen metabolism disorder caused by deficiency of hepatic phosphorylase associated with an enlarged liver and mild hypoglycaemia... Elizabeth F. Neufeld Elizabeth F. Neufeld Elizabeth F. Neufeld is an American geneticist whose research has focused on the genetic basis of metabolic disease in humans.Neufeld and her Russian Jewish family emigrated to the United States from Paris in 1940; they had left Europe as refugees to escape Nazi persecution... |
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for the biochemical elucidation of lysosomal storage diseases and the resulting contributions to biology, pathology, prenatal diagnosis and therapeutics. |
| 1989 | John Gurdon John Gurdon Sir John Bertrand Gurdon , FRS is a British developmental biologist. He is best known for his pioneering research in nuclear transplantation and cloning. He was recently awarded the Lasker Award.-Career:... |
for his introduction of the xenopus oocyte into molecular biology and his demonstration that the nucleus of a differentiated cell and of the egg differ in expression but not in the content of genetic genetic material. | |
| Edward B. Lewis Edward B. Lewis - External links :* *... |
for his demonstration and exploration of the genetic control of the development of body segments by homeotic genes. | ||
| 1990 | Maclyn McCarty Maclyn McCarty Maclyn McCarty was an American geneticist.Maclyn McCarty, who devoted his life as a physician-scientist to studying infectious disease organisms, was best known for his part in the monumental discovery that DNA, rather than protein, constituted the chemical nature of a gene... |
for his part in the demonstration that the transforming factor in bacteria is due to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and the concomitant discovery that the genetic material is composed of DNA. | |
| 1991 | Seymour Benzer Seymour Benzer Seymour Benzer was an American physicist, molecular biologist and behavioral geneticist. His career began during the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s, and he eventually rose to prominence in the fields of molecular and behavioral genetics. He led a productive genetics research lab both at... |
for having generated a new field of molecular neurogenetics by his pioneering research on the dissection of the nervous system and behavior by gene mutations. | |
| 1992 | M. Judah Folkman Judah Folkman Moses Judah Folkman was an American medical scientist best known for his research on tumor angiogenesis, the process by which a tumor attracts blood vessels to nourish itself and sustain its existence... |
for his discoveries which originated the concept and developed the field of angiogenesis research. | |
| 1993 | No award | ||
| 1994/5 | Michael J. Berridge Yasutomi Nishizuka Yasutomi Nishizuka was a Japanese biochemist who discovered protein kinase C and made important contribution to the understanding of molecular mechanism of signal transduction across the cell membrane.- Birth and education :... |
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for their discoveries concerning cellular transmembrane signalling involving phospholipids and calcium. |
| 1995/6 | Stanley B. Prusiner Stanley B. Prusiner Stanley Ben Prusiner is an American neurologist and biochemist. Currently the director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at University of California, San Francisco . Prusiner discovered prions, a class of infectious self-reproducing pathogens primarily or solely composed of protein... |
for discovering prions, a new class of pathogens that cause important neurodegenerative disease by inducing changes in protein structure. | |
| 1997 | Mary Frances Lyon | for her hypothesis concerning the random inactivation of X-chromosomes in mammals. | |
| 1998 | Michael Sela Michael Sela Michael Sela is an Israeli immunologist of Polish Jewish origin. He is W. Garfield Weston Professor of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.- Birth and academic career :... Ruth Arnon Ruth Arnon Ruth Arnon is an Israeli biochemist and codeveloper of the multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone. She is currently the Paul Ehrlich Professor of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science.-Early life:... |
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for their major discoveries in the field of immunology. |
| 1999 | Eric R. Kandel Eric R. Kandel Eric Richard Kandel is an American neuropsychiatrist who was a recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons... |
for the elucidation of the organismic, cellular and molecular mechanisms whereby short-term memory is converted to a long-term form. | |
| 2000 | No award | ||
| 2001 | Avram Hershko Avram Hershko Avram Hershko is a Hungarian-Israeli biochemist and Nobel laureate in Chemistry.-Biography:Born Herskó Ferenc in Karcag, Hungary, Hershko emigrated to Israel in 1950. Received his M.D. in 1965 and his Ph.D in 1969 from the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel... Alexander Varshavsky Alexander Varshavsky Alexander Varshavsky is a Russian-American biochemist and recipient of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the Wolf Prize in Medicine and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 2001 for his research on ubiquitination... |
; / |
for the discovery of the ubiquitin system of intracellular protein degradation and the crucial functions of this system in cellular regulation. |
| 2002/3 | Ralph L. Brinster Ralph L. Brinster Ralph Lawrence Brinster is an American geneticist and Richard King Mellon Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.- Birth and education :... |
for the development of procedures to manipulate mouse ova and embryos, which has enabled transgenesis and its applications in mice. | |
| Mario Capecchi Mario Capecchi Mario Renato Capecchi is an Italian-born American molecular geneticist and a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a method for introducing homologous recombination in mice employing embryonic stem cells, with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies... Oliver Smithies Oliver Smithies Oliver Smithies is a British-born American geneticist and Nobel laureate, credited with the invention of gel electrophoresis in 1955, and the simultaneous discovery, with Mario Capecchi and Martin Evans, of the technique of homologous recombination of transgenic DNA with genomic DNA, a much more... |
; / |
for their contribution to the development of gene-targeting, enabling elucidation of gene function in mice. | |
| 2004 | Robert A. Weinberg | for his discovery that cancer cells including human tumor cells, carry somatically mutated genes-oncogenes that operate to drive their malignant proliferation. | |
| Roger Y. Tsien Roger Y. Tsien Roger Yonchien Tsien is a Chinese American biochemist and a professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego... |
for his seminal contribution to the design and biological application of novel fluorescent and photolabile molecules to analyze and perturb cell signal transduction. | ||
| 2005 | Alexander Levitzki Alexander Levitzki Alexander Levitzki is an Israeli biochemist who is a Professor of Biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.- Birth and education :... |
for pioneering signal transduction therapy and for developing tyrosine kinase inhibitors as effective agents against cancer and a range of other diseases. | |
| Anthony R. Hunter Anthony R. Hunter Anthony Rex Hunter is a British-American biologist who is a Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California, San Diego. His research publications list his name as Tony Hunter.... |
/ | for the discovery of protein kinases that phosphorylate tyrosine residues in proteins, critical for the regulation of a wide variety of cellular events, including malignant transformation. | |
| Anthony J. Pawson | / | for his discovery of protein domains essential for mediating protein-protein interactions in cellular signaling pathways, and the insights this research has provided into cancer. | |
| 2006/7 | No award | ||
| 2008 | Howard Cedar Howard Cedar Howard Cedar or Haim Cedar is an Israeli-American biochemist.- Biography :Cedar was born in the United States. He received a bachelor's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, in 1970, received a MD and PhD from the New York University.From 1970 to 1973, he worked for the U.S... Aharon Razin Aharon Razin Aharon Razin is an Israeli biochemist.-Awards:In 2004, Razin was awarded the Israel Prize, for biochemistry.... |
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for their fundamental contributions to our understanding of the role of DNA methylation in the control of gene expression. |
| 2009 | No award | ||
| 2010 | Axel Ullrich Axel Ullrich Axel Ullrich in is a German cancer researcher and has been the Director of the Molecular biology dept. at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany since 1988. This deptartment's research has primarily focused on signal transduction... |
for groundbreaking cancer research that has led to development of new drugs. | |
| 2011 | Shinya Yamanaka Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese physician and adult stem cell researcher. He serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University, as a senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated J... Rudolf Jaenisch Rudolf Jaenisch Rudolf Jaenisch is a biologist at MIT. He is a pioneer of transgenic science, in which an animal’s genetic makeup is altered. Jaenisch has focused on creating transgenic mice to study cancer and neurological diseases.... |
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for the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from skin cells (SY) and demonstration that iPS cells can be used to cure genetic disease in a mammal, thus establishing their therapeutic potential (RJ). |