The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation honored three medical researchers at an awards luncheon on September 26 in New York. According to a foundation official, the 1997 award winners represent the distinct approaches and scientific perspectives that must combine in the fight against disease.
Each received $25,000 and a statuette of Nike of Samothrace, an international symbol of perseverance and triumph over adversity. The Lasker awards, known in some circles as the "American Nobels," are regarded as a leading predictor of the Nobel Prizes. Fifty-seven recipients of the Basic Medical Research Award have gone on to win a Nobel. Earlier this month, Stanley B. Prusiner, who received a Lasker award in 1994, was named as the 1997 winner of the Nobel in physiology or medicine.
The research of this year's recipients represents how medicine is pushed forward by studies from both microscopic and macroscopic perspectives, according to Joseph L. Goldstein, ...