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The coveted prize has been awarded to a Scottish veterinarian, who is one of those who has been championed and who has been helped by the other.
The Lasker Awards, which are among the nation's most prestigious prizes in medicine, have been awarded to the United States. who in addition to doing groundbreaking work in RNA biology, paved the way for a new generation of female scientists.
The awards are given by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and carry a prize of $ 250,000 for each of three categories. They are sometimes called the "American Nobels" because of the Nobel Prize.
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Dr. John B. Glen
He developed the drug propofol, now has an extensive use of anesthetic that has had surgery.
Dr. Glen, the recipient of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, is only the second veterinarian to win Lasker in 73 years, according to the foundation.
He was a student career path for Dr. Glen, but he was interested in anesthesia at the Glasgow University's veterinary school. "I was anesthetizing dogs, cats, horses – whatever animals came around," Dr. Glen said in an interview. Once used anesthesia one has pelican to fix its beak.
When he arrived in the 1970s At ICI Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Glen has had a great deal of attention to the problem, and has recently begun to treat it as a replacement for thiopentone, a widely used anesthetic that quickly made patients groggy afterward.
In lab tests on mice, he and his colleagues discovered that one of the company's existing compounds, propofol, appeared to work and thiopentone but wore off quickly, without the hangover effect of the earlier drug. Propofol was approved in 1986 in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The drug, known as "milk of amnesia" because of its milky consistency, has been used by patients and is credited with leading to the rapid expansion of outpatient surgery because patients recover so quickly.
In 2009, Michael Jackson's personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, took the lead on Michael Jackson's dose of the drug to the singer. Dr. Murray was convicted in 2011 on charges of involuntary manslaughter, and Dr. Glen said he followed the trial closely.
"It was never intended to be used in that way," Dr. Glen said. But, he said, "I'm delighted that it has become so widely used."
Joan Argetsinger Steitz
She became a champion of women in her field and trained nearly 200 future scientists.
Dr. Steitz, the recipient of the Lasker-Koshland Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science, said winning the award is particularly significant because it has a long history of becoming an undergraduate lab technician in the early 1960s.
"When I started out being excited by science – but I did not think about it," she said in an interview. "The one thing that I really wanted to have the respect of my peers for the scientific contributions I made, and for my participation in the scientific community."
More than four decades later, Dr. Steitz has her own lab at Yale University and is known to be in the field of RNA biology but for dominated by men.
She was an author of a 2007 National Academy of Sciences report that recommended specific steps for maximizing the potential of women in academic science and engineering. Since then, she has been recognized as a mentor. She has trained almost 200 students and postdoctoral fellows, according to the Lasker Foundation.
Of the 360 papers that have come from the laboratory, do not include her name, "a gesture of generosity that reflects the belief that the students and the postdoctoral fellows who work completely independently should be allowed to publish on their own," according to the Lasker foundation's quote.
In an interview, Dr. Steitz downplayed this detail. She said in her early days of running her own lab, she was very happy because she was following in the scientific tradition she had learned as a young researcher.
As for her role as an activist, "I feel a little embarrassed by that, because there are so many women that have so much more," she said. What she has done, she said to be "a good citizen and try to help women and other underrepresented people to fulfill their potential."
David Allis and Michael Grunstein
They took a new look at the protein packing material of DNA.
From opposite ends of the country, Dr. Allis, in the University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, pioneered work that elevated the importance of histones, proteins in the chromosomes that previously had gone overlooked. They are the recipients of the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.
DNA molecules are so long that if they were stretched from end to end, one strand would reach six feet. Histones are the proteins that coiled these strands into a microscopic cell – and they were longer than DNA spools, part of the basic machinery of the cell.
"I went into the field of thinking," Dr. Grunstein said in a video produced by the Lasker Foundation. "I did not want to go the direction everyone else was going in."
What Dr. Grunstein and Dr. Allis discovered is that, in fact, plays a crucial role in turning genes on and off, which allows each cell to be assigned task. The two worked separately, Dr. Grunstein focusing on genetics, and Dr. Allis on biochemical processes.
While their award is for basic science, the practical implications for their discoveries are profound. "Mistakes in setting this up to cancer," Dr. Allis said in the video.
Drug developers used the evolving understanding of histones to come up with new treatments, such as Zolinza, sold by Merck. More are in the pipeline.
"It's really exciting," said Dr. Allis said.
More coverage of the Lasker Awards
Katie Thomas covers the business of health care with a focus on the drug industry. She started at The Times in 2008 as a sports reporter. @katie_thomas
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