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Thursday, March 11, 2010
Lander, other Genome Project researchers win U.S.'s biggest medicine prize
By The Business Review (Albany) and Mass High Tech staff
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Albany Medical Center Prize has awarded its annual prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research to three American scientists who have played a key role in the Human Genome Project, a mapping of the human genetic blueprint.
The three recipients are Dr. Eric Lander, president and director of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard; Dr. David Botstein, director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University; and Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
The $500,000 Prize, often called “America’s Nobel,” is the largest award in medicine or science in the United States. The three scientists will receive their awards on April 23 at Albany Medical Center.
Because his role as NIH director puts him in charge of research grants to institutions like Albany, N.Y.-based Albany Med, Collins declined the cash part of award to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
James Barba, CEO of Albany Med, called the Human Genome Project a “revolutionary development that dramatically expanded our knowledge of human disease.”
The work of Lander, Collins and Botstein is credited with unlocking the human genome, paving the way for easier identification and study of genes associated with common diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, and less common genetic conditions like progeria (premature aging) and Huntington’s disease. Barba said knowledge gleaned from the Human Genome Project has led to an explosion of genetic research and “will in the future undoubtedly be a key to diagnosing, treating and combating many human disease conditions.”
Lander sits on the newly appointed board of directors at the institute. He founded the Broad Institute, a research center to continue work on the science of the human genome, in 2003. He founded and served as the former director of the Whitehead Insitute/MIT Center for Genome Research. In October of 2009 Lander was honored by the New England Healthcare Institute as one of four “Innovators in Health” for leading the charge in health-care reform.
This is the 10th year the Albany Medical Center Prize, has been awarded. It was established in 2000 by the late Morris “Marty” Silverman, a businessman and philanthropist, to honor scientists whose work has “demonstrated significant outcomes that offer medical value of national or international importance.” Silverman, who was born in Troy, wanted to draw positive attention to Albany Medical Center and the Albany area as a center for biomedical research and medical education.
In the 1980s, Botstein, a geneticist, was among the first to propose the concept of building a complete genetic map of the human being. Before that time, scientists and physicians interested in finding genes responsible for certain conditions had to hunt for those genes over vast chromosomal territory — a time-consuming and very often fruitless task.
Botstein soon enlisted the help of Lander, a mathematician. Together, they created the first practical plan to make and use a comprehensive genetic map of the human genome. In 1987, Lander showed how one could develop maps of complex multiple-gene diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
Meanwhile, Collins, a noted physician and biologist at the University of Michigan, was applying new gene-seeking techniques — most notably developing a technique for identifying particular disease-related genes known as positional cloning. With collaborators in Toronto, he used the technique to make the landmark 1989 discovery of the gene that causes cystic fibrosis.
The U.S. Government launched the Human Genome Project in 1990. Lander’s laboratories at MIT became leading contributors to the project, helping to construct maps and then the DNA sequence of human and mouse genomes. Collins was named director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH in 1993 and oversaw the project through its completion in 2003, providing an entire sequence of human DNA.
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