Five researchers have been honored in the 2003 International Gairdner Awards (sponsored by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) announced April 8. The citation recognizes that the winners "have done elegant, provocative and essential work in neuroscience and immunology."
Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck are commended for their work exploring the neurological basis of our perception of the sensory environment "through brilliant technical innovation and creative analysis of neural circuits". The committee also recognized Seiji Ogawa for his use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the non-invasive imaging of the brain that represents a "technological revolution in neuroscience and is being explored in such clinical domains as ageing and pre-surgical mapping."
The structural biologist Wayne A. Hendrickson pioneered a novel x-ray diffraction technique that identified CD4, a key molecule in the binding of HIV to their target cells. Ralph M. Steinman discovered dendritic cells — the immune cells ...
