Mar 4, 2024
“It wasn’t enough to sit at the table,” said Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, “we wanted to be the table.” Brinker, a 2005 Lasker Laureate, tells the story of how a small startup nonprofit came to lead the effort to increase funding for breast cancer research.
When Nancy Brinker’s...
Feb 21, 2024
In May of 1995, a man was thrown from his horse during an equestrian competition and broke his neck, becoming paralyzed from the shoulders down. This would be a life-altering injury for anyone, but this man was Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman from 1978 to 1987. After his accident, Reeve used his...
Jan 30, 2024
Lasker Laureate Alec Jeffreys developed DNA fingerprinting, a technology that revolutionized human genetics and forensics diagnostics. He thought that it would take years to see his technique used outside of the lab. “But,” he says, “I could not have been more wrong.” Listen to Jeffreys tell the origin story...
Oct 9, 2023
“The idea of spending your time digging into mysteries…I thought that would be a wonderful way to spend your life.”
Evelyn Witkin did spend her life digging into mysteries, and she was recognized with the 2015 Lasker Award for her work that solved one—how some bacteria survived 100x the radiation that killed...
May 15, 2023
The venom of the Brazilian pit viper Bothrops jararaca causes a sudden and catastrophic drop in blood pressure. Armed with this knowledge, David Cushman and Miguel Ondetti set out to isolate the active component. In this 1999 interview with Princeton University professor Leon Rosenberg, Cushman tells the story of their...