08.10.2024 China-born Chen Zhijian wins top US medical research prize said to foretell Nobel

Texas-based Chen wins Albert Lasker Award for discovery of enzyme cGAS, holding out ‘promise for fighting infectious diseases and cancer’.

China-born scientist Chen Zhijian is among the winners of this year’s Lasker Awards, a top American prize for medicine and public health research that has gained a reputation for identifying future Nobel laureates. Announcing the awards on Thursday, the Lasker Foundation said the 2024 Albert Lasker Award for basic medical research had gone to Zhijian “James” Chen, professor of molecular biology and director of the Centre for Inflammation Research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre (UTSW). Chen is the sixth scientist of Chinese origin to receive a Lasker Award. He is also the second Chinese recipient in the basic research category, more than six decades after biochemist Choh Hao Li, who won in 1962. Established in 1945 and often referred to as “America’s Nobels”, the Lasker Awards recognise significant achievements in medicine and biomedical research in four categories. They are sometimes seen as a harbinger of Nobel prizes in the sciences, as many Lasker winners have gone on to win that prestigious award as well. China’s Tu Youyou, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for medicine, won the Lasker-DeBakey Award for clinical medical research in 2011 for her discovery of artemisinin and its use in the treatment of malaria. Renowned Chinese bioscientist Rao Yi, president of Capital Medical University in Beijing, posted about the Lasker Awards on social media. In an article posted to his WeChat account, Rao said that Lasker awardees in the basic research category were more likely to win Nobels than those in the clinical medical research category.

Source: South China Morning Post