Classic Lasker

“The natural history of heart valve disease had not changed in hundreds of years—until Dr. Starr stepped in.”   In September 1960, Albert Starr performed the first successful valve-replacement surgery on a human patient. He placed a mechanical valve in the patient's heart that he and his collaborator, Lowell Edwards, developed. The patient survived for 10 years. Building on Starr's success, Alain Carpentier developed a method to use heart valves from pigs. Patients with mechanical valves need to take anticoagulants (blood thinners) for the rest of their lives. Carpentier's use of natural valves eliminated that need. Starr and Carpentier became good friends and colleagues. They shared the 2007 Lasker Award for the development of prosthetic heart valves; Edwards passed away before the Award was given.

“By the time we finished walking across this great lawn, we had decided on this exciting experiment.” —Elizabeth Blackburn on meeting her collaborator, Jack Szostak at a research conference. Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak won the 2006 Lasker Award for the prediction and discovery of telomerase, the enzyme that maintains the ends of chromosomes (telomeres). Blackburn and Szostak predicted the existence of such an enzyme, based on experiments they did in yeast and tetrahymena. Blackburn and Greider showed that this enzyme, telomerase, really does exist. The research of these three scientists broke open a new field and forever changed science and medicine.  

Roderick MacKinnon won the 1999 Lasker Award for elucidating the structure of potassium channels. His work provided the first molecular description of an ion selective channel and helped knock down what he called “psychological barriers” in the field. After MacKinnon, the structure of transmembrane ion channels went from being seen as unsolvable to solvable. In this 1999 interview with Chris Miller, Professor of Biochemistry at Brandeis University, MacKinnon shares anecdotes from his early career, discusses how the field reacted to his groundbreaking work, and talks about what motivates him scientifically. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Find the full 55-minute interview here: https://laskerfoundation.org/winners/function-and-structure-of-ion-channels/  

Lasker Laureate Daniel Koshland's work changed our understanding of how enzymes interact with their substrates. In this 1998 interview with Robert Tjian, a fellow professor at Berkeley, Koshland talks about how the scientific community reacted to his “induced fit” model of enzyme-substrate interaction, and discusses his decades-long career, which spanned work as a scientist, an administrator, and a journal editor. Read about the 1998 Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award in Medical Science: https://laskerfoundation.org/winners/science-communication-and-education/

“Cancer was a silent disease.” —2005 Lasker Laureate Nancy G. Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Foundation   When Nancy Brinker's sister, Suzy, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977, people did not talk about cancer, which could make receiving a diagnosis especially isolating and frightening. After Suzy passed away, Brinker started the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Her goal was to spark a cultural and a clinical change by bringing the disease into the open, jumpstarting research, and improving patient care. In this 2005 interview, Brinker talks about her sister, about the early struggles of getting the Foundation off the ground, and about the hard-won success of what is now the world's largest nonprofit funding source for the fight against breast cancer.

In May of 1995, a man was thrown from his horse during an equestrian competition and broke his neck, becoming paralyzed from the shoulders down. This would be a life-altering injury for anyone, but this man was Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman from 1978 to 1987. After his accident, Reeve used his celebrity to advocate for federal funding of medical research. In this 2003 interview, recorded in celebration of Reeve receiving the 2003 Public Service Lasker Award, he discusses his activism.

Lasker Laureate Alec Jeffreys developed DNA fingerprinting, a technology that revolutionized human genetics and forensics diagnostics. He thought that it would take years to see his technique used outside of the lab. “But,” he says, “I could not have been more wrong.” Listen to Jeffreys tell the origin story of DNA fingerprinting and hear about the first real-world case that it helped solve.

“The idea of spending your time digging into mysteries…I thought that would be a wonderful way to spend your life.” Evelyn Witkin did spend her life digging into mysteries, and she was recognized with the 2015 Lasker Award for her work that solved one—how some bacteria survived 100x the radiation that killed other cells. Witkin discovered the DNA-damage response, a genetically regulated emergency system that protects the genomes of all living organisms. In an interview with Emmy-nominated writer/director/podcaster Flora Lichtman, Witkin talks about what it was like to be at Cold Spring Harbor in the 1950s, when many major discoveries in molecular biology were made, and tells us a little bit about her hobby in retirement: Victorian poetry.

The venom of the Brazilian pit viper Bothrops jararaca causes a sudden and catastrophic drop in blood pressure. Armed with this knowledge, David Cushman and Miguel Ondetti set out to isolate the active component. In this 1999 interview with Princeton University professor Leon Rosenberg, Cushman tells the story of their Lasker Award-winning work that resulted in ACE inhibitors for the treatment of hypertension. Cushman and Ondetti were recognized not only for their development of a life-saving medication, but also for their innovative approach to drug design. Listen to the incredible story of captopril, one of the first drugs developed through rational design. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. The transcript of the entire 43-minute interview, along with the transcript for a 54-minute interview with Ondetti, can be found here: http://ow.ly/wGL750Oo4uQ

Oliver Smithies freely admits that he did not find a solution to the problem he set out to solve, but he was able to turn his initial failure into a success that forever changed biomedical research. The gene targeting method that Smithies developed made it possible to generate knockout mice as models for human disease. In this 2001 interview with Raju Kucherlapati, Smithies talks about his education, his Award-winning work, and why research is a bit like flying an airplane.     This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Find the entire interview here: https://vimeo.com/146792245 

After meeting a young man dying of renal failure, Willem Kolff could not shake the thought that there was a simple solution: remove urea from the blood. Using sausage skin and an enamel tub, Kolff made the rotating drum artificial kidney. This was the beginning of renal hemodialysis, now a widely used intervention for those suffering from kidney failure. In this 2002 interview, Kolff shares stories from his nearly seven-decade career, which began in pre-war Holland and took him all the way to the University of Utah.  This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Find the entire 49-minute video here: http://ow.ly/YGji50Nb6oQ

In vitro fertilization has become fairly common, but have you ever stopped to think about the fundamental research that was required to make it possible? Just figuring out how to properly fertilize the eggs in a petri dish took five years. Listen in as 2001 Lasker Laureate Robert G. Edwards tells the story of how he met Patrick Steptoe, his essential collaborator in making IVF a reality, shares the ethical dilemmas they faced, and reflects on the legacy of their decisions. Read more about the Award: http://ow.ly/k0IF50KhaZx

In this 2002 interview, Lasker Award and Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel speaks with the then-newly minted Lasker Laureate James Darnell Jr. Darnell won the 2002 Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award in Medical Science for an exceptional career that opened two fields in biology—RNA processing and cytokine signaling—and for his dedication to the development of many creative scientists. Darnell shares his journey from his childhood home in rural Mississippi to training alongside preeminent scientists at the NIH, details how he made his discoveries, and talks about important findings made by other groups. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Find the entire 42-minute interview here: http://ow.ly/36MY50Kgi2e

“If we're smart enough to figure out the cause of something, we can intervene to change the effects.” William Foege won the 2001 Lasker Award for Public Service for his courageous leadership in improving worldwide public health. Here, Foege is interviewed by Allan Rosenfield of Columbia University. Foege talks about working to eradicate smallpox in a country torn by civil war, reveals his moment of greatest pride as the director of the CDC, and shares a story about introducing a new strain of corn in Africa. Read about the 2001 Mary Woodard Lasker Public Service Award: http://ow.ly/9vIQ50JhLMg

We've been hearing a lot about immunology the past two years since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. But can you explain how our immune system works? 2007 Lasker Laureate Ralph Steinman discovered dendritic cells, the preeminent component of the immune system that initiates and regulates the body's response to foreign antigens. He discusses how he got interested in science, what it felt like to receive a Lasker Award, and eloquently explains how dendritic cells protect us from pathogens.   Read more about Steinman's Award-winning work: http://ow.ly/UH7R50J0C5R

“I was forty-seven years old before I did anything that people would really look at twice.” Janet Rowley's discovery of chromosomal translocations made it possible to diagnose cancer at the molecular level, and her work earned her a Lasker Award. But getting there wasn't easy. In this interview, given before the 1998 Awards, Rowley talks to former NIH Director Francis Collins and shares stories of her life before she made her groundbreaking discoveries. She had to wait nine months to start medical school because the quota for women (3 out of a class of 65) had been filled, she worked part time for twenty years while she raised her four sons, and it took almost ten years before anything noteworthy came out of her research. Through it all, she chose to enjoy what she had instead of getting discouraged. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity. Find the entire 40-minute interview here: http://ow.ly/ZJrB50Iumei

In this 1996 interview between Lasker Award winner Paul Zamecnik and three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, Zamecnik tells us about how he got into basic research as WWII was imminent, about not winning the Nobel prize, and his chance encounters that led him to ask the question: “How do you make a protein, anyway?”. Zamecnik was recognized for six decades of brilliant and original science, including the development of antisense DNA, a technology that enables selective inhibition of gene expression and revolutionized biochemistry.   Learn more about Zamecnik's Award-winning work: http://ow.ly/2j0N50IcYNM