The Lasker Has Been Awarded to Scientists for Cancer Research & Ebola Response

October is coming, and the scientific community will also enter the "Nobel Prize Month". Every year many media organizations predict the Nobel Prize. The Lasker Awards, however, one of the most respected prizes in the medical field, also known as the "America's Nobels", is considered to be prelude of the Nobel Prize. As more than 30 Lasker winners have won a Nobel Prize in the past 20 years, not to mention its own authority and influence. So who gets this year's Lasker award?

The Lasker Awards includes the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Lasker~Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science, and the Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award. This year’s Lasker were announced Tuesday, with recipients recognized for efforts in the fields of cancer research, DNA research, and one group’s response to the Ebola crisis. Each prize carries an award of $250,000 and the awarding ceremony will be held in Manhattan on 18 September.

Two scientists, Evelyn M. Witkin, 94, of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in New Jersey, and Stephen J. Elledge, 59, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, shared the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for for their separate work on "DNA-damage response," which clarifies the DNA in our bodies responds and protects itself against thousands of daily genomic disturbances, such as chemicals, radiations and malfunctioning biochemical processes.

James P. Allison, 67, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, has won the Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for developing a new and highly effective cancer therapy that veers from typical treatments. His discoveries have led to transformative new therapies that unleash the immune system against cancer.

The 2015 Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award was awarded to MSF (Doctors Without Borders), in recognition of its leading to deal with the Ebola outbreak in Africa, as well as sustained and effective response to health emergencies in the front line.