This year's $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize in Biomedicine and Biomedical Research is being shared by three recipients.
The recipients were announced Thursday: Princeton’s Dr. Bonnie Bassler, Washington University Medical School’s Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, and Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Dennis Kasper.
Dennis McKenna, President and CEO of Albany Med Health System, says their discoveries will save lives.
“Their discoveries are leading to breakthroughs in global health, including novel ways to battle bacterial infections and other infectious diseases, innovative ways to fight devastating problems like malnutrition, and new ways to decrease susceptibility to disease like inflammatory bowel disease and asthma.”
Amongst the previous awardees are 10 Nobel Prize recipients.
Bassler, who holds a Ph.D, discovered insights into quorum sensing, in which bacteria use chemical signals to orchestrate group action, enabling them to cause disease.
Bassler showed bacteria communicate across species as well as within their own, and demonstrated the possibility to disrupt that communication with synthetic compounds, and in so doing potentially halt bacterial infections. She says she was inspired to study quorum sensing on a whim after learning about it from Michael Silverman, a former Scripps Institute of Oceanography professor and pioneer in the field, at a conference.
“My curiosity was ignited. I asked to work with him as a postdoc, and he took me on. Mike taught me to be an adventurer, and to have the highest bar for rigor and creativity. He also generously let me take my project to my independent job at Princeton University. On my last day, in Mike's lab, he said, I hope you put me out of business. That kindness launched my career. The Princeton Molecular Biology Department also took a chance on me. It was not like academia was clamoring to hire me so they could capture the harmless bioluminescent bacterial research field. But apparently chit chat among the world's most ancient critters appealed,” Bassler said.
Now, Bassler says, she gets to extend the same opportunity to others.
“I also give the projects away when lab members leave. I understand that I'm not losing anything. There are many lifetimes worth of discovery to make. Plus, having your former trainees eclipse you makes for the proudest moments,” Bassler said.
Dr. Jeffrey Gordon established the microbiome research field. His research showed the role microbial communities in the gut microbiome play in human health, how variations in those communities can impact health, and the microbiome origins of non-communicated diseases such as obesity, especially focusing on malnutrition. He thanked the award committee and his collaborators in research, saying he learned just as much from them.
“There's an African proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far go together. In many ways, the type of environment they created and perpetuated — and they're supportive of one another — illustrate the foundations for interdisciplinary research, and for human flourishing, spirit, hope, trust, kindness, generosity, a shared sense of purpose, and a shared joy in the hunt for understanding,” Gordon said.
Dr. Dennis Kasper discovered that the microbiome modulates the immune system, and identified specific bacterial molecules in gut bacteria that influence the immune system. He also showed that bacterial virulence is dependent upon capsular polysaccharides in bacterial cell walls.
Kasper says he ended up in research by accident.
“I was trying to avoid going to Vietnam as a doctor. I trained in infectious disease and was against the war. And all doctors at that time were drafted and I had the good fortune of being assigned, rather than to somewhere in Hanoi or something, to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. And I spent three years there. And even though I really just trained as a physician, I learned that research was really cool, that I really love doing it,” Kasper said.
Kasper thanked the committee and his former students, while adding special thanks to his wife.
“She has done most of the work, the real work involved in my lab,” Kasper said.
The late Morris “Marty” Silverman of Troy established the Albany Medical Center Prize in 2000. A $50 million gift commitment from the Marty and Dorothy Silverman Foundation provides for the prize to be awarded annually for 100 years.
The prize was first awarded in 2001 and is one of the nation’s largest for science and medicine.
