The Massry Prize was established in 1996, and is administered by the Meira and Shaul G. Massry Foundation. The Prize, of $40,000 and the Massry Lectureship, is bestowed upon scientists who have made substantial recent contributions in the biomedical sciences. Shaul G. Massry, M.D., who established the Massry Foundation, is

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

Medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

and

Physiology Physiology (; ) is the science, scientific study of function (biology), functions and mechanism (biology), mechanisms in a life, living system. As a branches of science, subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ syst ...

and

Biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

at the Keck School of Medicine,

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

. He served as Chief of its Division of Nephrology from 1974 to 2000. In 2009 the KECK School of Medicine was asked to administer the Prize, and has done so since that time. Out of 25 prizes bestowed until 2021, fourteen were awarded to future

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

winners. No Massry Prize was awarded in 2020, 2022 and 2023. Awardees are nominated by a scientific committee composed of faculty and researchers from Keck School of Medicine of USC, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, Tertiary referral hospital, tertiary, 915-bed teaching hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre, academic health science center located in Los Angeles, California. Part of the Cedars ...

Previous laureates

Source
KECK School of Medicine
* 1996 Michael Berridge in the field of Signal Transduction * 1997 Judah Folkman in the field of

Growth Factors A growth factor is a naturally occurring substance capable of stimulating cell proliferation, wound healing, and occasionally cellular differentiation. Usually it is a secreted protein or a steroid hormone. Growth factors are important for regu ...

* 1998 Mark Ptashne in the field of Regulation of Transcription * 1999 Gunter Blobel in the field of Protein Trafficking. Blobel won the 1999

in Physiology and Medicine two months after his receipt of the Massry Prize. * 2000 Leland H. Hartwell in the field of

Cell Cycle The cell cycle, or cell-division cycle, is the sequential series of events that take place in a cell (biology), cell that causes it to divide into two daughter cells. These events include the growth of the cell, duplication of its DNA (DNA re ...

. Hartwell won the 2001

in Physiology and Medicine one year after he received the Massry Prize. * 2001 Avram Hershko and Alexander Varshavsky in the field of

Proteolysis Proteolysis is the breakdown of proteins into smaller polypeptides or amino acids. Protein degradation is a major regulatory mechanism of gene expression and contributes substantially to shaping mammalian proteomes. Uncatalysed, the hydrolysis o ...

and the Ubiquitin System. Hershko won the 2004

in Chemistry three years after he received the Massry Prize. * 2002 Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies for their pioneering work on Gene targeting. They won the 2007

in Physiology and Medicine five years after they received the Massry Prize. * 2003 Roger Kornberg, David Allis and Michael Grunstein in the field of Nuclear Chromatin. Kornberg won the 2006

in Chemistry three years after he received the Massry Prize. * 2004 Ada Yonath and Harry Nolla in the field of Ribosomal Structure. Yonath won the 2009

in Chemistry five years after she received the Massry Prize. * 2005 Andrew Fire, Craig Mello and David Baulcombe in the field of RNAi. Fire and Mello won the 2006

in Physiology and Medicine one year after they received the Massry Prize. * 2006 Akira Endo in the field of Novel Therapies specifically for the Discovery of

Statin Statins (or HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors) are a class of medications that lower cholesterol. They are prescribed typically to people who are at high risk of cardiovascular disease. Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) carriers of cholesterol play ...

s * 2007

Michael Phelps Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985) is an American former competitive swimmer. He is the most successful and most decorated Olympian of all time with a total of 28 medals. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold me ...

for the development of the

PET Scan Positron emission tomography (PET) is a functional imaging technique that uses radioactive substances known as radiotracers to visualize and measure changes in Metabolism, metabolic processes, and in other physiological activities including bloo ...

and its Clinical Application * 2008 Shinya Yamanaka, James A. Thomson, and Rudolf Jaenisch for their work in the field of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Yamanaka won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine four years after he received the Massry Prize. * 2009 Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros for their work in the field of Micro RNA. They won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine fifteen years after they received the Massry Prize. * 2010 Randy Schekman for his work regarding the molecular mechanism of defects in secretion that lead to human diseases of development such as spina bifida. He won the 2013 Nobel in Physiology and Medicine three years after he received the Massry Prize. * 2011 Franz-Ulrich Hartl and Arthur Horwich for work on Chaperone-assisted protein folding * 2012 Michael Rosbash, Jeffrey C. Hall and Michael W. Young for their studies of the molecular basis of circadian rhythms. They won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine five years after they received the Massry Prize. * 2013 Michael Sheetz, James A. Spudich and Ronald D. Vale for their work defining molecular mechanisms of intracellular motility * 2014 Steven Rosenberg, Zelig Eshhar and James P. Allison for their research on T cells. * 2015 Philippe Horvath, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for their research on gene editing. Doudna and Charpentier won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry five years after they received the Massry Prize. * 2016 Gero Miesenböck, Peter Hegemann,

Karl Deisseroth Karl Alexander Deisseroth (born November 18, 1971) is an American scientist. He is the Chen Din Hwa, D.H. Chen Foundation Professor of Bioengineering and of psychiatry and Behavioural sciences, behavioral sciences at Stanford University. He is ...

for their research on

optogenetics Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light. This is achieved by Gene expression, expression of Channelrhodopsin, light-sensitive ion channels, Halorhodopsin, pumps or Photoactivated ade ...

. * 2017 Rob Knight, Jeffrey Gordon, Norman R. Pace for their discovery of the microbiomes. * 2018 Gregg Semenza, William Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe for their work on hypoxia. They won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine less than a year after they received the Massry Prize. * 2019 Ryszard Kole, Stanley T. Crooke for their seminal work in the development of oligonucleotides targeting messenger RNA as novel therapeutics for a wide range human diseases. * 2021 Svante Pääbo, David Reich, Liran Carmel for the discovery of ancient DNA. Pääbo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine less than a year after he received the Massry Prize.

References

{{Reflist Biomedical awards American academic awards

Previous laureates

See also

References