Kazutoshi Mori (left), Peter Walter (right)ALBERT AND MARY LASKER FOUNDATIONKazutoshi Mori of Kyoto University in Japan and Peter Walter of the University of California, San Francisco, have won the 2014 Lasker Award for basic medical research. Mori and Walter are being honored by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation for their work related to the unfolded protein response—a cellular stress response that has been implicated in several protein-folding diseases.
In its announcement, the foundation said that “Mori and Walter’s work has led to a better understanding of inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis, retinitis pigmentosa, and certain elevated cholesterol conditions in which unfolded proteins overwhelm the unfolded protein response.”
Three years ago, the Lasker Foundation honored Franz-Ulrich Hartl and Arthur Horwich for their protein-folding work with its 2011 basic research award.
Meanwhile, Alim Louis Benabid of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, and Mahlon DeLong of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, have won the this year’s Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for their deep-brain stimulation work that has been used to help restore and motor function in patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease.
And the University of Washington’s Mary-Claire King has ...
