Nov 11, 2024
“The natural history of heart valve disease had not changed in hundreds of years—until Dr. Starr stepped in.”
In September 1960, Albert Starr performed the first successful valve-replacement surgery on a human patient. He placed a mechanical valve in the patient’s heart that he and his collaborator, Lowell...
Oct 7, 2024
“By the time we finished walking across this great lawn, we had decided on this exciting experiment.” —Elizabeth Blackburn on meeting her collaborator, Jack Szostak at a research conference.
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak won the 2006 Lasker Award for the prediction and discovery of...
Jun 9, 2024
Roderick MacKinnon won the 1999 Lasker Award for elucidating the structure of potassium channels. His work provided the first molecular description of an ion selective channel and helped knock down what he called “psychological barriers” in the field. After MacKinnon, the structure of transmembrane ion channels went...
May 11, 2024
Lasker Laureate Daniel Koshland’s work changed our understanding of how enzymes interact with their substrates. In this 1998 interview with Robert Tjian, a fellow professor at Berkeley, Koshland talks about how the scientific community reacted to his “induced fit” model of enzyme-substrate interaction,...
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...