Arthur Horwich Receives Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award

(Originally published by Yale University)

September 15, 2011

Arthur Horwich, Sterling Professor of Genetics & Pediatrics, Yale School of Medicine, has received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award from the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation.

Stated the Lasker Foundation,"The 2011 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award honors two scientists for their discoveries concerning the cell's protein-folding machinery, exemplified by cage-like structures that convert newly made proteins into their biologically active forms. With this work, Franz-Ulrich Hartl (Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried) and Arthur L. Horwich (Yale University School of Medicine) toppled traditional notions of how proteins fold inside cells and established new principles that operate from microbes to humans."

In an announcement to the Yale School of Medicine, Dean Robert J. Alpern, M.D., Ensign Professor of Medicine, stated in part,"The award... is one of the highest forms of recognition that a scientist can receive. It is testament to the qualities that Dr. Horwich's colleagues at Yale and around the world have come to appreciate during his more than three decades as a biomedical scientist: curiosity, imagination, collaboration, and persistence. He and Dr. Hartl have previously been recognized with a string of awards, including the Gairdner International Award in 2004, the Stein and Moore Award from the Protein Society in 2006, the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Science in 2007, the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science in 2008, and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry, also in 2008. Dr. Horwich was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Horwich on this remarkable achievement."

Since the award’s inception in 1945, 80 recipients have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, 28 of whom were awarded in the past two decades, according to the Lasker Foundation’s website. The Lasker Foundation offers awards in four separate areas each year — basic medical research, clinical research, special achievement in medical science and public service.

Horwich is a member of the steering committee that governs the Kavli Institute of Neuroscience at Yale University and has been instrumental in directing the scientific agenda at the Institute.