UHN congratulates Drs. Ernest A. McCulloch and James E. Till, who were awarded the 2005 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in recognition of the ground-breaking work that first identified the stem cell--and formed the basis of all current stem cell research.
According to the Lasker Foundation, donors of the awards, "The 2005 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research honors two scientists who first identified a stem cell, which set the stage for all current research on adult and embryonic stem cells. By the turn of the 20th century, scientists were postulating the existence of self-renewing cells that could specialize for a wide variety of purposes. In a series of ingenious and elegant experiments 60 years later, Ernest McCulloch and James Till demonstrated that such a type of cell in the blood-forming--or hematopoietic--system existed. They established the properties of stem cells, which still hold true today. Furthermore, they lay the foundation for the isolation of stem cells and for the detection of proteins that help these precursor cells develop and mature. Till and McCulloch's discoveries explained the basis of bone marrow transplantation, which prolongs the lives of patients with leukemia and other cancers of the blood. Moreover, the team set a new standard of rigor for the field of hematology, transforming it from an observational science to a quantitative experimental discipline."
Drs. McCulloch and Till are Senior Scientists at the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI). OCI is one of three research institutes comprising the University Health Network, a leading-edge biomedical and healthcare research organization with international stature, and is a teaching partner of the University of Toronto. Our research institutes are home to 465 scientists and clinician scientists, and more than 1900 staff and trainees. In 2004/2005 UHN Research had a research budget of $161M. UHN Research brings together the innovation, talent and resources to achieve global impact in basic, translational and clinical research.
The Lasker Awards are considered "America's Nobel". For more information, visit the Lasker Foundation web site.
