5 earn coveted medical prizes

The 2005 Lasker Awards for medical research are going to scientists who discovered stem cells, invented genetic fingerprinting and developed a powerful technology that played a crucial role in mapping the human genome.

A nonscientist, Nancy Brinker, won the Lasker Public Service Award for creating the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which has helped transform a disease once rarely mentioned in polite conversation into an international issue.

The awards, widely considered the nation's most-prestigious medical prizes, are being announced today by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation.

The two scientific awards each carry a $50,000 prize, split between the winners; the public-service award has no monetary prize. Mary Lasker created the awards in 1946 as a birthday gift to her husband, Albert, in hopes of curing cancer in 10 years.

The prize for basic medical research will be shared by Ernest McCulloch, 79, and James Till, 74, of the Ontario Cancer Institute and the University of Toronto for their pioneering identification of a stem cell. Stem cells can give rise to specialized cell types, and scientists are studying them in hopes of creating tissue to treat diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's.

The work of McCulloch and Till set the stage for today's stem-cell research, the Lasker Foundation said. By the early 1970s, they had showed clearly that a single type of bone-marrow stem cell could create red cells, white cells and platelets. Their work explained the effect of bone-marrow transplantation, used to treat people with leukemia or other blood cancers.

The Lasker prize for clinical medical research will be shared by two scientists from the United Kingdom: Sir Alec Jeffreys, 55, of the University of Leicester and Sir Edwin Southern, 79, of Oxford University. They are responsible for developing two powerful technologies, Southern blotting and DNA fingerprinting, that, the foundation said, "together revolutionized human genetics and forensic diagnostics."

Jeffreys discovered in 1984 that individuals' DNA differed in particular sites, where the chemical sequence that makes up the genetic code exhibited variable numbers of repeats. That meant a DNA sample could be linked to the person it came from. He also showed that people inherit the identifying signals from their parents.

Such "genetic fingerprinting ... has helped solve crimes, settle paternity and immigration disputes, establish the bases of inherited diseases, enhance transplantation biology, save endangered species, establish human origins and migrations and advance countless other beneficial endeavors," the Lasker Foundation said.

Southern, in the mid 1970s, devised a now-standard lab technique named for him that allows scientists to detect specific bits of genetic code within an organism's overall DNA. Jeffreys used it in his work, and it played a crucial role in mapping the human genome.

Starting with $200, Brinker created the Komen foundation in 1982 to fulfill a promise to her sister, Susan Komen, who had died of breast cancer two years earlier, at age 36.

Among other things, Brinker started the Komen Race for the Cure, running and walking races around the country that have helped raise more than $750 million to support breast-cancer research, education, screening and treatment. Brinker, 58, is also a breast-cancer survivor.