Immune Cell Pioneers Win Prestigious Lasker Medical Award

Two scientists who discovered the role of key immune cells won one of the Lasker Medical Research Awards in 2019, prizes often dubbed the American Nobels.

Immunologists Jacques Miller, of the Walter and Eliza Hall Medical Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and Max Cooper of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, will share the price of $ 250,000 for basic medical research.

The tandem identified T and B cells, which are essential components of the immune system's ability to recognize specific pathogens and cancer cells. B cells produce antibodies – proteins that recognize the molecular signatures of pathogens. T cells are an essential defense against virus-infected cells and cancer cells.

Miller, who worked at the University of London in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, identified a population of immune cells that thymus develop in mice, called T-lymphocytes or T-cells. He showed that mice lacking a thymus – an organ whose role was unknown – were prone to infections and did not reject the skin grafts of other rodents.

Cooper relies on Miller's discovery, while he was at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in the 1960s. He determined that cells produced in an organ found in birds – called Fabricius fellowship – were responsible from the production of antibodies and that their development was distinct from that of T. Cooper and other lymphocytes then showed that humans and other mammals produced these B lymphocytes, or B cells, in their bone marrow.

Because of their ability to recognize – and block – most molecules, antibodies have been successfully developed into drugs. Three scientists who helped develop an antibody-based drug used to treat certain breast cancers were the recipients of the Lasker-DeBakey Medical Research Award this year. H. Michael Shepard and Axel Ullrich of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany, identified the gene, HER2, which codes for the protein that the drug, called Herceptin, targets at the Genentech biotechnology company. Oncologist Dennis Slamon, of the University of California at Los Angeles, has shown that some breast tumors have extra copies of HER2 and overproduction of his protein product.

A third prize, the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award 2019, has been awarded to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The Geneva-based non-governmental organization raises funds to pay for vaccines in low- and middle-income countries. The organization helped vaccinate 760 million children in 73 countries. Last month he launched a $ 7.4 billion fundraising campaign to vaccinate 300 million people by 2025.